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ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND 



J 



By ADAM BADEAU 

AUTHOR OF "military HISTORY OF ULYSSES S. GRANT" AND 

"conspiracy: a cuban romance" 



OF CO* 



?^ 






NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1886 



a)A53- 



M 



Copyright, 1885, 1886, by Adam Badeau. 



All righti reterved. 



CONTENTS. 



No. Page 

INTRODUCTION 5 

I. The Queen 7 

11. At Court 17 

III. Rank and Title 29 

IV. Primogeniture 42 

V. Precedence 52 

VI. The Prince of Wales 61 

VII. Americans at Court 71 

VIII. The Crown in Politics 83 

IX. The Personal Character of the Queen 94 

X. Precedence in the Servants' Hall 103 

XL The House of Lords 113 

XIL The Princess of Wales 125 

XIII. American Ministers 135 

XIV. Manners 146 

XV. Caste 155 

XVI. Illegitimacy.. 165 

XVII. Servants in the Country 173 

XVin. Servants in Town 183 

XIX. A Nobleman Indeed 193 



4 CONTENTS. 

No. . Page 

XX. Spiritual Peers 201 

XXI. The PoiMps and Vanities of the Church 208 

XXII. Church and State 214 

XXIII. The House of Commons 222 

XXIV. The Land 230 

XXV. Entail 238 

XXVI. Sport 246 

XXVII. The Accessions 256 

XXVIII. Literature and the Lords 264 

XXIX. The London Season 272 

XXX. Aristocratic Influence 281 

Gladstone — The Iconoclast 289 



II^TEODUCTlOl^. 

The one thing which more than any other, tor an 
American, distinguishes English life and civilization 
from his own is — Aristocracy. Even Em-opeans 
find the characteristics of the British people more 
afiected by caste than is the case with the most 
enlightened races of the Continent, w^hile the exist- 
ence and influence of the institution are to a demo- 
crat, fresh from the equality and uniformity of 
social and political life in the New World, matter 
of unceasing marvel. After twelve years spent in 
England, the spectacle w^as to me as remarkable as 
ever, and it remains my deliberate opinion that the 
relations of the aristocracy with the Court, the 
Government and politics, with the Church, with 
literature, the army and navy — even with trade and 
manufactures, and certainly with agriculture and 
the land, with the dependent classes and the very 
poor — constitute the pivot on which all English life 
revolves, the feature which is most marked in the 
national character and polity; the explanation of 
what is most peculiar, the charm of what is most 



INTRODUCTION. 



attractive, and tlie root of what is most repelling ; 
the strength of what is greatest in the past or 
firmest in the present, as well as the weakness and 
danger of whatever is most threatened now, or most 
certainly doomed in the future. 

With this belief I propose to give some account 
of the English aristocracy, as I had the opportunity 
of seeing and studying it between the years 1869 
and 1881. My chapters are not designed to form 
the groundwork of an attack nor to hold up even 
the excellent points of an aristocracy for the imita- 
tion of republicans ; they are intended neither for 
an exhaustive treatise nor a political disquisition; 
but to set forth what I have myself seen and known ; 
to tell what struck me as most curious or interest- 
ing ; to ofier a picture of an institution which has 
had an immense influence on the whole modern 
world, but which, with all its glories, its pomp and 
power, its fascinations and its faults, its vices And 
its virtues, is destined soon to take a place by the 
side of the Roman Empire and the Yenetian oli- 
garchy. It may be well to portray some of its more 
salient features before the stately but time-worn 
fabric falls. 



ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 



THE QUEEN. 

The Qaeen is the head of the aristocracy. With 
many of its members, in one way or another, she is 
allied. A large number of those of ancient lineage 
quarter the royal arms, very many, it is true, with 
the bar sinister ; but probably a third of the great 
families of the realm can trace their descent, legiti- 
mately or illegitimately, from a former sovereign. 
In official documents the monarch styles every peer 
above the rank of baron, " cousin," and the Queen's 
own children sit in the House of Lords. The Duke 
of Wellington once refused to apologize to a 
brother of George TV. for words spoken in that 
assembly, although the King demanded it, for 
" there," he said, " we are all peers." 

Not a few of the aristocracy are literally cousins 
of the present Queen. The last King, her uncle, 
ennobled seven of his illegitimate children, while 
two others married peers. One of these first cous- 
ins was for a long time Her Majesty's housekeeper, 
another her naval aid-de-camp. They are proud of 
the kinship, too, and sport the royal liveries. 



8 . AKISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

There are connections, however, that Yictoria 
does nut recognize. The line seems to be drawn at 
the descendants of sovereigns. One of the family 
habitually visits German watering-places with a 
lady who is not his wife, and duchesses dine with 
her because of her relations with royalty ; but the 
sullied gentlewoman never went to Windsor. Her 
Majesty countenances no such conduct in subjects, 
of w^iatever degree. It is needless to say that her 
own life has been a model of purity. 

The only marriage with one of her subjects 
which the Queen has authorized is that of her 
daughter, the Princess Louise, with the Marquis of 
Lome, eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. This was 
the iirst that had been sanctioned by both Crown 
and Churcli since James II. married the daughter 
of Clarendon. Two of the sons of George 11. , it is 
true, married into the aristocracy, but the wife was 
never allowed the precedence of a sovereign's child, 
and since the time of the Duchess of Cumberland, in 
1771, a marriage of one of the royal family has been 
invalid without the permission of the Crown. The 
Duke of Sussex, one of the Queen's uncles, was mar- 
ried to the daughter of an earl, who never bore her 
husband's title, or was received at court ; and after 
that lady's death, he contracted a morganatic mar- 
riage, which also gave his wife no rank nor preced- 
ence. Yet both were women of unblemished virtue, 
and the second was made a duchess, though not with 



THE QUEEN. ' 9 

her husband's title; the Queen visited her, and 
the Prince of Wales attended her funeral. She 
simply could not be admitted to that exalted sphere, 
reserved for royalty alone, '^ unmixed with baser 
matter." 

The Queen, however, not only permitted, but 
made, the marriage of the Princess Louise. If the 
story universally current is true, the royal maiden 
returned the regard of her brother's tutor, who 
had dared to cast his eyes so high, and there 
was danger of a contingency entirely contrary to 
royal etiquette, of a marriage beyond even the 
morganatic sphere. To prevent a catastrophe so 
appalling, a place in the Church was given to the 
tutor, which separated him from the palace, and 
the hand of the Princess was offered to several 
of the young nobility in turn, but the distinction 
was declined, until finally Lord Lome consented 
to enter the royal family. The Queen, however, 
had not foreseen the humiliations which such 
a connection would impose. When the Duke of 
Argyll went to pay his first visit at Windsor after 
the engagement of his son, he ventured to kiss 
the lady who w^as about to become his daughter. 
One who was present assured me that the Queen 
reddened and drew back with indignation at the 
liberty. 

Yet Her Majesty sanctioned the mamage of the 
Princess Helena with a prince who already had a 



10 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

morganatic wife, and she has just given the young- 
est of her daughters to another, supposed by royalty 
to be so far beneath its sphere that the imperial 
family of Germany refused to be present at the 
ceremony. The connections of the Queen, indeed, 
range to the very extremities of the (royal) social 
scale. One of her children is married to the son of 
the greatest of living potentates, another to the 
daughter of a Czar, while a third accepted a com- 
moner, the mere heir to a dukedom ; and the sister 
of her favorite son-in-law, a Princess of Sleswig- 
Holstein, the aunt of Her Majesty's grandchildren, 
is absolutely married to a physician, and what is 
worse, with Her Majesty's approval. I knew a 
doctor's wife in England whom that Princess vis- 
ited, and who evidently felt that they both belonged 
to the profession. "Whether she was connected with 
royalty, or royalty with physic and therefore with 
her, I could not tell, but she always put on airs 
when she talked of the Princess. 

These social faux pas of the Queen she seems at 
other times inclined to atone for by a rigorous con- 
formity to etiquette. She received the Shah of 
Persia as a brother monarch, met him at the thresh- 
old of Windsor, and offered her cheek to be kissed 
by the barbarian because he was a reigning sov- 
ereign, though she had shuddered to see her daugh- 
ter saluted by the MacCallum More. Perhaps she 
thought the dusky embrace might wipe out the 



THE QUEEN. 11 

memory of the mesalliance. Then, too, when the 
late Emperor of the French had reached the pm-ple 
by perfidy and fraud, she buckled the Garter on the 
adventurer's knee, although years before she had 
refused him admission to her court. She even kept 
up the intimacy after he had fallen. Napoleon III. 
was a frequent visitor at Buckingham Palace during 
his exile, and the Empress is perhaps the one woman 
whom the Queen of England has ever regarded 
with the friendship bestowed on equals. With no 
other crowned head has she been on similar terms. 
Yet, however dignified the behavior of Eugenie 
may have been in later days, the career of Mile, de 
Montijo would certainly have excluded her from 
the presence of the English Queen. The future 
sovereign was visiting in the family of a lady whom 
I know, when the Emperor's passion became evi- 
dent ; and the astute hostess has told me of the 
advice she thought it necessary to give her guest. 
" If you never see him alone," she said, " you will 
certainly become an empress." The Spanish beauty 
heeded the sagacious counsel, and mounted the 
imperial throne. Once a bishop always a bishop, 
and having worn a crown the parvenu potentates 
could not be divested of the divinity that doth 
hedge even upstart kings and successful usurpers, 
though the French people had dismissed and de- 
throned them. At least the superstition lingers in 
royal minds. 



12 ARISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

Misfortune, however, in some eyes atones for 
crimes, and the fact that they were fallen gave these 
ephemeral royalties, perhaps, a claim upon their 
more fortunate sister. The Queen, indeed, has 
always shown undiminished deference to the mem- 
bers of dethroned dynasties. The King of Hanover 
received royal honors in England after his crown 
was snatched from him by the remorseless Bis- 
marck, and at his death he enjoyed the distinction 
of a royal funeral. So, too, the Orleans princes 
during their long exile were always recognized as 
royal. They, however, were relatives, and entitled 
to consideration on that score. 

But the principle was carried to the extreme in 
the case of the son of Theodore, His late Majesty of 
Abyssinia. The British arms had overturned that 
sable sovereign, who died in defence of his king- 
dom, and his son became a prisoner and a pensioner 
in England. I was once at a gathering of the clans 
in the neighborhood of Balmoral, at which Prince 
Leopold was present and the Prime Minister of the 
day. They came together, and in the same carriage 
was the African Prince of the blood. He looked to 
me like any little negro boy of nine or ten ; but he 
had his gentlemen in waiting, he took precedence 
of the Prime Minister, and he stood on the red 
carpet reserved for royalty alone. 

The Queen still exacts for herself the punctilio of 
former centuries. Men and women of the highest 



THE QUEEN. 13 

rank kneel to her to-day; Cabinet Ministers kiss 
lier hand. She refuses to receive any personal 
service from a menial, except at table. She never 
opens a door or directs a letter. Dukes and duch- 
esses cloak her in public, and commoners become 
" Honorable" for life because they have waited on 
Her Majesty. At a garden party I have seen a 
duchess walking behind her to carry a bouquet, or 
standing at the entrance of a tent while her mistress 
went within to rest or refresh herself The sover- 
eign's own daughters arrange her robes when she 
opens Parliament ; the Prince of Wales pays hom- 
age as a subject on the same occasion ; her children 
must be presented at court upon their marriage. In 
the early part of her reign she was visiting Louis 
Philippe, then King of the French, at his Chateau 
d'Eu, and one day asked for a glass of water. It 
was handed her by a servant, but Her Majesty de- 
clined to receive it ; whereupon the King directed 
one of his own sons to offer the goblet, which then 
was graciously accepted. 

The ladies and gentlemen in waiting are not ex- 
pected to sit in the presence of royalty, and count- 
esses and marchionesses get themselves larger shoes 
because they must stand so long. I knew a personal 
attendant of the Queen who acted as secretary, 
a woman of very high rank, and as old as Her 
Majesty, who often, after writing till she was ex- 
hausted, asked permission to finish on her knees. 



14 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

Those who have the honor of dining at Windsor are 
shown after dinner into a long gallery where there 
are no seats, and perforce they stand till Her 
Majesty is ready to retire. Then I have seen two 
duchesses approach and throw a shawl across the 
shoulders of the Queen, literally acting as mistresses 
of the robes. 

Yet the countesses and duchesses are seldom will- 
ing to surrender their posts. There seems a fascina- 
tion about the life, in spite of its irksomeness. 
Many of the same lords and ladies have been in 
attendance on the Queen for years, and some of 
them certainly entertain a profound affection for 
Her Majesty. Indeed, although at drawing-rooms 
and on the rare occasions when the Queen is seen 
in public her demeanor is reserved and her expres- 
sion almost stern, all this is changed with individ- 
uals. The plain and stout lady, rather dowdily 
dressed, becomes gracious and winning in the last 
degree. Her whole face is lighted with the desire 
to please and the certainty that she succeeds. 
There is something more than suave or urbane in 
both smile and bearing, something not exactly 
of condescension, for the consciousness of supe- 
riority is necessary for this, and it is the conscious- 
ness only of her grandeur, not of your inferiority, 
that she feels and makes you feel — a triumph of 
manner worthy of the greatest of actresses, or of a 
queen. 



THE QUEEN. 15 

I can speak without prejudice or partiality, for 
the only opportunity I have had of conversing with 
Her Majesty was when I thought I had been treated 
with discourtesy ; but even then the sweetness of 
her behavior overcame my soreness and subdued 
my not unnatural resentment. Her first utterance 
was to thank me for a book I had sent her seven 
years before, and which had been acknowledged at 
the time, and every syllable she spoke was intended 
to give me pleasure. The acts of the Queen may 
sometimes seem ungracious, her action, never, I am 
told. 

I was once strongly reminded of the great gen- 
iuses of the stage by the mien and deportment of 
the Majesty of England. It was at the opening of 
the Albert Hall. The building was crowded to its 
utmost, and the Queen walked down the vast 
amphitheatre to what may be called the stage, pre- 
ceded and followed by great dignitaries and accom- 
panied by the Prince and Princess of Wales. When 
she turned to face the multitude eight thousand 
people were standing in her honor, and the cheers 
were deafening. And then there came across her 
features an expression which it is hardly possible to 
describe ; her face fairly shone with gratification at 
the loyalty of her people and motherly affection for 
them in return. She courtesied again and again, 
lower and lower, exactly like a great actress playing 
a queen who had been called out to receive the 



16 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

plaudits of her audience. But of all the famous 
mistresses of the stage that I have seen, the women 
of genius who enraptured nations, none ever sur- 
passed in grace or dignity, at the proudest moments 
of her mimicry, this real sovereign acknowledging 
absolute homage. 



II. 

AT COURT. 

The intercourse of a British subject of the upper 
classes with the sovereign usually begins with a 
presentation at court; but there are still houses 
where the Queen visits personally an old or invalid 
friend, and the children may thus be earlier brought 
into the presence of royalty. After the Thanks- 
giving for the recovery of the Prince of Wales there 
was much unfavorable comment because Her Maj- 
esty had appeared at Saint Paul's in bonnet and 
shawl, although peers and members of the House 
of Commons were compelled to wear levee dress. 
Former sovereigns on similar occasions had worn 
their robes and crowns, and the loyal throng had 
been greatly disappointed at not beholding their 
Queen in "all her proud attire." The next day 
Her Majesty paid a visit to the mother of a duke 
who had been unable to leave her couch for years. 
Notice as usual was given in advance, the house 
was prepared, the red carpet laid, the gentlemen of 
the family were in evening dress, and the Queen 
was received with the proper etiquette. During 
2 



18 AKTSTOCRACY EST ENGLAND. 

lier stay she was petting a little boy some five or 
six years old, when the urchin, who had heard the 
talk about Saint Paul's, cried out, to the horror of 
the family : " Are you the Queen ? Why didn't 
you w^ear your crown ? " But only the scions of 
illustrious houses enjoy such opportunities of direct 
and early communication with royalty. Young 
ladies of quality are usually presented to Her Maj- 
esty upon their entrance into society, and the men 
as they emerge from hobble-de-hoy-hood or the uni- 
versity. 

The first day I spent in London I went to a 
levee. It was held by the Prince of Wales, and 
only men attended. I was then a Secretary of Le- 
gation, so that I had what are called the entrees^ 
and enjoyed peculiar opportunities for watching 
the spectacle. The Prince was standing with his 
attendants in the throne-room when the diplomatists 
entered in the order of their rank, and those of the 
same rank according to the seniority of their stand- 
ing at the English court. This point of precedence 
was thought of sufiicient importance to be estab- 
lished at the Congress of Vienna, and the repre- 
sentatives of the United States conform to the rule. 
Each ambassador or minister is followed by the 
members of his embassy or legation, who have no 
place of their own ; they are simply the suite of 
their chief. 

The Prince was at the head of the room facing 



AT COURT. 19 

the entrance ; on his left were his brothers and tlie 
other men of the rojal family, all arranged punc- 
tiliously according to their degree ; then came the 
Government of the day; on the right were the 
courtiers in attendance, the whole forming a semi- 
circle, which extended to the doors for entrance and 
exit on the opposite side of the room. Each per- 
son coming to court brings a card, with his name 
or title written out in full ; this is given up at the 
door and passed along to the Lord Chamber- 
lain, who stands next to the Prince and reads the 
card aloud. A profound bow is all the obeisance 
required from men. If the Prince, however, 
knows the visitor well or wishes to do him especial 
honor, he extends his hand, which can only be taken 
by an ungloved hand in return, so that " l^o gloves 
at court " is a peremptory etiquette, at least for the 
right hand. After a reverence to each of the royal 
personages, the members of the diplomatic corps 
take up their positions immediately opposite the 
Prince and his surroundings, thus forming a nar- 
row lane, through which all after comers must pass, 
for the diplomatists constitute a part of the court, 
and must remain until royalty leaves the room. 

All others, except a very few great personages 
who have the entrees^ pass directly through the lane 
of dignitaries and into an anteroom, so that for 
them the ceremony lasts but a moment ; but the 
procession continues, sometimes for hours, and as 



20 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

every one but an American is in some showy dress, 
the effect to an unaccustomed eye is decidedly im- 
posing. I was particularly struck at my first levee 
with the manly beauty of the young aristocrats. I 
was not then familiar with the ruddy complexions 
and brown or golden hair, the superb forms and 
graceful bearing that abundant exercise and the pe- 
culiar climate combine to give the British youth of 
the higher class. Arrayed in Highland kilt or 
military scarlet, or even in the plainer breeches and 
laced coat of the modern courtier, they passed 
along, by far the handsomest set of men I had ever 
seen. 

I must say, however, that the show outside was 
finer still. The huge footmen were sometimes 
smarter than their masters in looks as well as 
clothes, for the court liveries are often the dress 
worn by the nobility in former times, while the 
lackeys themselves are selected for their height and 
the size of their calves. I know a duchess who, 
whenever she hires a footman, makes him get into 
breeches and march up and down in her dining- 
room till she can decide whether his shape and his 
walk are what her dignity requires. 

A drawing-room is held by the Queen, or on 
rare occasions by the Princess of Wales. It is in- 
tended only for ladies, and the announcement is 
made in the public prints that *' noblemen and 
gentlemen are not expected to present themselves 



AT COURT. 21 

unless in attendance on the ladies of their families." 
The Queen is easily fatigued, and prefers as much 
as possible to limit the number of her faithful sub- 
jects on these occasions. But as everybody of con- 
sequence who is in London is supposed to go to 
court once a year, and as no one is invited to the 
Queen's balls or concerts who has not first attended 
a levee or drawing-room, the crowd is often very 
great. 

The names of those not previously presented 
must be sent in " two clear days " in advance, as 
well as the names of those who present them ; and 
it does not follow, as a matter of course, that every 
name is accepted. Any known immorality in a 
woman is fatal, no matter what her rank. On this 
point Her Majesty is immutable. No woman who 
has deserted her husband for another man, and 
none who has lived with a man without marriage, 
can ever be presented to the English Queen. If 
the stigma is discovered too late, a notice is 
inserted in the newspapers that the presentation 
has been cancelled. This occurred some years 
ago in the case of a woman of title, w^ife of a 
member of the Government. But, usually, ladies 
of sullied reputations are aware of Her Majesty's 
rule, and take care not to risk consequences so dis- 
agreeable. 

Dress, however, deters quite as many as charac- 
ter. The regulations are as rigid on one point as 



22 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

the other. The oldest dowager must bare her with- 
ered arms and neck before presenting herself in the 
august presence, or, in order to appear with suffi- 
cient protection, a medical certificate is indispensa- 
ble. Then the train must be three yards long, and 
the position of the feathers that must be worn is a 
matter of supreme importance. The Queen directs 
that the feathers shall be placed at the back of the 
head, but they must be high enough to be visible 
to Her Majesty when the lady enters the room. 
Women of rank have been turned away for neglect- 
ing some of these rules. 

Court mourning, too, is a subject for the most 
serious consideration. The number of days it must 
be worn, the depth of the sorrow it indicates, the 
colors of the fans and the shoes, are all prescribed ; 
and the presence-chamber of Her Majesty after a 
person of royal rank in Siam or Brazil has gone to 
receive his deserts in some other world, is lugubri- 
ous in the last degree. A black drawing-room, as 
it is called, would be unendurable were it not that 
all is so manifestly matter of form. The grief that 
court ladies feel on the death of the uncle of the 
Czar, or of some petty cousin of the Queen, whom 
even Her Majesty has seldom seen, can hardly be 
very profound. Besides, if the mourning lasts more 
than ten days, they are generally allowed to miti- 
gate its sombreness with purple or red, and though 
their clothes must be as black as the court circular 



AT COURT. 23 

requires, they may go to as many balls as they 
please. 

There is a long and tedious time to be endured 
by those whom loyalty takes to court. At both 
levee and drawing-room the visitors must pass 
through different apartments, to which they are ad- 
mitted in sections; ropes are drawn across these 
rooms to prevent the aristocrats behind from push- 
ing forward too eagerly, and the enclosures thus 
formed are properly enough called " pens." This 
device, however, does not prevent great crowding 
and sometimes flagrant ill-breeding in the " highest 
society of Europe." The daughter of an earl told 
me she had often known ladies stick pins into the 
bare arms of those in front to make them move out 
of the way; and in the rush after the ropes are 
withdrawn, I have twice had my epaulettes torn 
from my shoulders. If this should occur to an 
Englishman at the White House what lectures we 
should receive on the manners of a democracy ! 

The Queen, as I have said, is anxious to restrict 
the number of those who pay their homage. The 
members of the Government, however, are ex- 
pected to be present whenever the sovereign holds 
her court, and until recently their wives as well 
were always in attendance, and sometimes they pre- 
tended to find the obligation irksome. But not 
long ago these ladies were informed that Her Maj- 
esty did not desire their company at more than a 



24: AKISTOCRACT IN ENGLAND. 

single drawing-room in a season, and tliej took the 
notification in very high dudgeon. But there was 
no recourse. 

Indeed, when there are more than two unmarried 
daughters in a family, the Queen's most formal in- 
vitations expressly exclude a third. *' The Ladies 
Guelph (2)," or "The Misses Plantagenet (2) " is 
the form in which the royal courtesy is extended. 
This limitation appears even on the cards addressed 
to ambassadors and the representatives of sovereign 
States, who are thus warned not to encroach with 
their whole families at once on the palatial hospitali- 
ties of England. 

This cautionary notice, however, is issued only 
for balls and other entertainments to which the 
guests are specially invited. A "court" is an oc- 
casion when individuals of rank pay their respects 
to a royal personage, usually without actual invita- 
tion. The Lord Chamberlain makes it known that 
a levee or drawing-room will be held, and any 
whose rank entitles them are at liberty to present 
themselves. The diplomatic corps, as a matter of 
course, attend ; it is, indeed, considered a discourtesy 
if they are absent without good cause. 

But the chiefs of the corps in England not long 
ago received an intimation that their secretaries and 
attaches were not expected to be present at drawing- 
rooms, l^ow, in such matters the Queen can, of 
course, command her own subjects, and she certainly 



AT COURT. 25 

ought to have the right to regulate her own court ; 
but there are no more sensitive beings on earth 
than diplomatic representatives away from home. 
Thej assume that all the dignity of their country 
is concentrated in their proper persons. The ques- 
tion where and how to place them arises at every 
ceremony, and is a constant occasion of irritation 
and discord. They are never satisfied, no matter 
what is done for them ; they are exacting, proud, 
punctilious, and often put aside politeness for pre- 
cedence and courtesy for form. Their prerogatives, 
they say, are matters not of privilege but of inter- 
national law. I have seen them commit outrages 
upon good manners that the roughest American 
would disdain to pei-petrate— thrust ladies back to 
take precedence of them, or leave a dinner-table 
because of the place to which they were assigned. 

So, of course, the diplomatists resented the at- 
tempt to prohibit their suites from attending court. 
One ambassador declared that he represented the 
person of his sovereign, and that Her Majesty had 
no right to dictate the degree of state or the retinue 
with which he should present himself as his master's 
proxy. Accordingly he took a whole carriage-load 
of secretaries with him to the drawing-room ; and he 
was admitted. For, without a doubt, and according 
to all the etiquettes, no sovereign can, without 
oifence, abridge the train of an ambassador. There 
have been wars for what was deemed less cause. 



26 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

But the ladies are waiting all this time in the 
pens. The presence-chamber is arranged as for a 
levee, only that the Queen, and not the Prince of 
Wales, is at the centre of the line ; next are the 
ladies of her family, and then the heir apparent 
and his brothers, or any royal strangers. Her 
Majesty wears a black gown and a widow's cap. 
Over the cap is usually placed a small diamond 
crown, while the ribbon of the Garter and similar 
orders are on her breast, as well as the Koh-i-noor 
and other jewels worthy of a queen. The Princess 
of "Wales and the other princesses are in full court 
dress — petticoats, trains, feathers, and all. Behind 
them stand their attendants, " male and female," 
as the court circular sometimes disdainfully describes 
them. 

When the diplomatic corps has made its reverences 
and taken its place, the English ladies follow, and 
as each enters the throne-room with her train over 
her arm, two gentlemen in waiting deftly seize this 
appendage and spread it behind her, till it hangs 
like a peacock's drooping tail. Then the lady, 
handing her card to a lord-in-waiting, passes up 
toward the Lord Chamberlain, and stands till he 
pronounces her name. Upon hearing it, she pros- 
trates herself in front of the Queen so that one knee 
nearly or quite touches the floor. If it is a presenta- 
tion, Her Majesty extends her hand with the back 
upward, and the neophyte placing her own hand 



AT COURT. 27 

transversely under that of the sovereign, raises the 
royal extremity to her lips. When the lady is of 
the rank of an earl's daughter, the Queen bends 
slightly forward to kiss the cheek of her subject, 
and the homage is complete ; but there have been 
occasions when the novice was insufficiently in- 
structed in advance and kissed the monarch in 
return, very much to the disgust of Majesty and 
the horror-struck amazement of the courtiers. After 
the obeisance to the Queen, another must be made 
to every one in the royal circle in turn, the depth 
of the courtesy being graduated according to the 
rank of the personage ; and as the last prostration 
is performed and the subject rises to her natural 
position in life again, two other watchful lords, or 
gentlemen, as skilful as the first, catch up her train 
and throw it once more over the lady's arm, and 
she slowly stumbles backward out of the room, 
having been at court. 

It took her two hours, I suppose, to dress, and 
she sat in evening costume two hours more in line 
in her carriage before she entered the palace ; then 
she was at least an hour in the pens, and she was 
two minutes in the presence of royalty. Now she 
must probably wait an hour or more for her car- 
riage, but she has been at court. If she is young, 
she has practised her obeisance for days in advance, 
and the backward step as well, and is delighted that 
at last she is in the world. If she is an aspirant after 



28 ARISTOCRACY m ENGLAND. 

social honors, a Becky Sharp working her way up- 
ward, Thackeray has told us of her sensations. If 
she has gone through the ceremony forty times 
before, she throws herself back in her carriage and 
exclaims, like the cockney who had seen the Apollo 
Belvidere : " Thank God ! That's done ! " 



III. 

RANK AND TITLE. 

The population of England is divided into peers 
and commoners. There are five hundred and 
eighty-nine of one class and thirtj-five millions of 
the other. The nobility, however, was at one time 
even more restricted in numbers. At the close of 
the Wars of the Roses there were twenty-nine peers 
left in England, and at the death of Elizabeth, in 
1603, there were still only fifty-nine. In the present 
year of our Lord about six hundred men, with 
their immediate families, constitute the aristocracy 
of England. 

The orders of nobility are five : Dukes, marquises, 
earls, viscounts, and barons. In every instance the 
eldest son succeeds by right of birth to the rank 
and titles of his father ; but all the children of a 
peer are titled, and their precedence is strictly de- 
fined. Nevertheless they are commoners in the eye 
of the law ; their titles are by courtesy only, and in 
official documents the eldest son of the Duke of 
Argyll is described as " John Campbell, commonly 
called the Marquis of Lome." I once heard a very 



30 ABISTOCRACY m ENGLAND. 

eminent man, himself a member of the aristocracy, 
deride the notion that the son of an English earl 
was noble. " That's what they call a nobleman ! " 
said this son and brother and uncle of earls. 

The wives of peers are all peeresses, and are 
styled duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, vis- 
countesses, and baronesses. There are also several 
peeresses in their own right, for in certain families, 
in default of sons, the dignity descends to daugh- 
ters. Should there be more than one daughter, they 
are co-heirs and the title remains in abeyance until 
only one survives. She then becomes a peeress in 
her own right, and transmits the succession to her 
eldest son. I knew such a lady, married to a com- 
moner, and he took her family name, so that their 
son, who would succeed, might inherit the greater 
name ; for no peeress can by marriage confer any 
rank on an ignoble husband. He remains a com- 
moner, and upon the death of his wife will be a 
commoner still, though his son becomes a peer. 
He is not even a dowager. The dignity of Lord 
Great Chamberlain is hereditary in one of these 
families, and sometimes descends to females. It 
was recently in abeyance between two old ladies 
who together constituted the Lord Great Chamber- 
lain of England. They were, however, allowed to 
depute one individual to act for both, on certain 
state occasions when this important functionary 
attends the Queen. 



RANK AND TITLE. 31 

Scotch and Irish peers, as such, have no admis- 
sion to the House of Lords, but there are twenty- 
eight representative Irish peers, elected by their 
fellows for life, who sit in that assembly, and six- 
teen Scotch lords, elected for a single Parliament. 
Very many of the nobility of Scotland and Ireland, 
however, are also peers of the United Kingdom, 
and therefore members, in their own right, of the 
House of Lords. Altogether there are about one 
hundred and forty peers without seats in the Upper 
Chamber. In all other respects their rights and 
privileges are the same as those of other peers of 
the same degree. Yet their dignity is less re- 
garded. A prominent commoner once sought per- 
mission of one of the Georges to ride in a precinct 
of St. James's Park reserved for the royal family 
and the court. " No, indeed," said the King ; " I 
will make him an Irish peer, but I won't let him 
ride in St. James's Park." 

Two archbishops and twenty-three bishops have 
seats in the House of Lords, but their titles are not 
hereditary, and their wives have neither rank nor 
precedence. The Archbishop of Canterbury goes 
before dukes, and next after the royal family, but 
his wife is plain Mrs. Smith or Jones, and follows 
every woman who has rank of her own in the 
kingdom. The spiritual lords can hardly be said 
to belong to the aristocracy, though you would 
never suspect it from their bearing. They sit in 



32 ARISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

its chambers and are reckoned in its degrees, but 
their blood is not ennobled. 

Of the present peerage only about two hundred 
families have been noble for more than a century. 
At the accession of George III., in 1Y60, the House 
of Lords numbered 175 members ; all the others 
have been created since, most of them for services 
to their party or the Prime Minister of the day. 
Pitt created fifty peers in five years, and during the 
seventeen years of his administration he thus re- 
warded 160 of his followers. That it is the minis- 
ter who really confers the dignity is shown by the 
habit of the English writers, who no longer speak 
of the Queen as creating a peer, but always attrib- 
ute the act to the Premier. Formerly, of course, 
this was the sovereign's faculty, but the power of 
the Crown, in this as in other matters, has passed 
to its nominal servants. During the twelve years 
that I spent in England Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. 
Gladstone together made sixty-one English noble- 
men. Of these, twenty-seven were promoted from 
a lower grade ; the others had been commoners, and 
were thus absolute additions to the peerage. A 
Liberal marquis was made a duke solely because of 
his immense wealth, and the appointment was uni- 
versally applauded, while a Conservative commoner 
found himself suddenly noble in all his veins be- 
cause he had been Beaconsfield's private secretary. 

In some few instances great military or naval 



RANK AND TITLE. 33 

achievements have been rewarded with a peerage. 
Marlborough, Wellington, and Nelson are the 
famous names that will occur to all, and Strath- 
nairn, Napier, and others in our own day have also 
fairly earned their rank by success in arms; but 
these can be counted on the fingers. The real 
passport to the upper House is the favor of the 
Prime Minister. Of course this may be won by 
public services ; a great diplomatist or a successful 
Governor-General is sometimes ennobled, or raised 
a step in the peerage, but rarely unless he is of the 
party in power. There are besides what are called 
"law lords," lawyers who have risen from the 
middle, or even tbe lower, class by their ability or 
learning, and finally reached a seat in the House of 
Lords ; but these must espouse a party, and have 
little chance of promotion while their antagonists 
are in possession of the Government The bishops, 
too, and even the archbishops, are appointed by the 
Prime Minister from his own party in politics. 
The Father in God must be a Tory to be conse- 
crated in Tory times, and a Liberal can succeed the 
Apostles only when the Liberals hold the reins. 
Nine-tenths of all the creations of peers in the last 
hundred years have been as purely for partisan 
reasons as the nominations of any President of the 
United States to w^hich the advocates of " civil ser- 
vice reform " have been most violently opposed. 
And these English appointments are not for a 
3 



34 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

term, nor for good behavior, but for life, and very 
often during very bad behavior ; not only to execu- 
tive, but to legislative office ; not to one man, but 
to his descendants as long as the institutions of 
England endure. "When Pitt had been eight 
years in power," says an English writer, " he had 
created between sixty and seventy peers, of whom 
the greatest part owed their elevation to the Parlia- 
mentary support which they had themselves given 
to the Minister, or to their interest in returning 
members to the House of Commons. Can we 
wonder," he adds, " if some of them were unworthy 
of nobility ? " This, however, was better than the 
action of the sovereigns themselves, when they were 
in reality, as well as in name, " the fountain of 
honor." Charles and James II. and George I. and 
II. all ennobled their mistresses. Most of the 
Kings have done the same for their illegitimate off- 
spring, while many of the peerages conferred by 
James I. and Charles II. were sold. 

On the other hand, no artist, no man of science, 
and, except Tennyson, no man of purely literary 
eminence, has ever received a coronet in England. 
Macaulay has sometimes been cited as an instance 
to the contrary ; but had not his great genius been 
applied to politics, he never would have penetrated 
the House of Lords. It was the Whig partisan, not 
the brilliant essayist, not even the partial historian, 
who was i-ewarded with a peerage ; and he would 



RANK AND TITLE. 35 

not have received the dignity had he not been 
childless and unmarried. For it is not unusual to 
bestow this prize on an old and unmarried plebeian, 
when it is probable that the title will become ex- 
tinct upon his death. Thus the aristocracy is kept 
exclusive, and if a man of the people finds his way 
within the sacred purlieus, it is so contrived that he 
shall not transmit his honors to another generation. 
The distinctions among the aristocracy are nu- 
merous and intricate. The eldest son of a nobleman 
of the rank of earl is " commonly called " by his 
father's second title, for many peers are of several 
degrees ; the families have generally been ennobled 
in a lower grade, and afterward risen to the rank 
they now enjoy. Some of the dukes have thus half 
a score of inferior titles, the Duke of Athole no 
fewer than seventeen. The younger sons of dukes 
and marquises use the prefix of Lord before their 
Christian name, while the younger sons of earls and 
all the sons of viscounts and barons have that of 
Honorable. In nearly the same way the daughters 
of dukes, marquises, and earls are called Ladies, 
and the daughters of viscounts and barons Honor- 
able. In all there must be eight or ten thousand 
of these people, including the widows and chil- 
dren of deceased peers, who retain a diluted no- 
bility. The grandchildren of peers are untitled, 
but the eldest son of an eldest son, being in the 
direct line of succession, has a place in the oligarchy. 



36 ARISTOCRACY m ENGLAND. 

Sometimes a man whose father is dead comes into 
a title transmitted from a more distant relative, an 
nncle or a cousin, and then, though he becomes a 
peer, his mother has not the rank which she would 
have enjoyed had he inherited from his father. 
Plain Mrs. Jones may have a son an earl, or even a 
duke. In such cases the brothers and sisters are 
raised to the rank of a peer's children; and the 
world calls them " paper " lords and ladies ; but the 
mother does not receive the promotion, for she 
would then become a peeress without having mar- 
ried a peer. 

Rank, however, descends below the nobility. The 
grade next to that of baron is baronet. This dignity 
is hereditary, but confers no right to a seat in the 
House of Lords. Its possessor bears the title of 
Sir before his Christian name, and his wife is called 
Lady. The first baronets were created by James I., 
and the title in his reign was often sold. At a time 
when the sovereign or the minister was lavish of 
the honor, a certain Duchess of Queensberry ex- 
claimed that she could not spit out of her carriage 
window without spitting on a baronet. The famous 
Lady Holland of Holland House was almost as 
arrogant in our own day. She was a baroness, 
and Sir Henry Holland, the well-known physician 
and baronet, had been one of her favorite guests ; 
but when she heard that he was about to marry, 
she declared that if he introduced another Lady 



KANK AND TITLE. 37 

Holland into London society he should never enter 
lier doors again. The dignity, however, is not a 
little prized by its possessors, of whom there were 
when I last counted no fewer than 873. 

The lowest title of all is that of knight, which is 
not hereditary, and carries little distinction, but the 
knight is called Sir, and his wife Lady. 

In society, titles are dropped as much as possible. 
IS'obody nowadays says " your grace " to a duke or 
an archbishop, and to use "my lord " or " my lady," 
or "your lordship" or "ladyship" savors of the 
shop or the servants' hall. Neither do people of 
condition often talk of the Marquis of Bute or the 
Countess of Cork. Among themselves they say 
Lord Bute and Lady Cork. Indeed lord and lady are 
the appellations given in conversation to everybody 
in the peerage below the ducal rank. To a duke 
you say Duke, and to a duchess Duchess, though 
people not used to this high company often slip in 
a " grace " or two, to the amusement of their neigh- 
bors, but never that I could observe to the disturb- 
ance or surprise of the ducal personages themselves. 
These probably think the present familiarity with 
which people of their importance are addressed 
decidedly inappropriate. A certain duchess went 
not long ago to call upon a countess named Lady 
Cowper, but found she was mistaken in the person ; 
and, expressing her regret, she said : " I suppose it 
was some inferior Lady Cowper I should have asked 



38 ABISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

for." The peeresses, indeed, are not at all pleased 
that the wives of knights and bai'onets should take 
the title of Lady. The ancient form prescribed for 
these gentlewomen of lower degree was Dame, and 
the superior ladies think that their inferior sisters 
should retain the older appellation, so that the dis- 
tinction in rank might be apparent. As it is, a 
marchioness may be confounded with the wife of an 
alderman, for either may be Lady Bath. 

But the baronets' wives and the knights' wives 
like the custom very well. Most women prize rank 
more than men, and I once heard a close observer 
say that no woman in England would refuse a duke. 
I don't think he was right. ^Nevertheless, a woman 
who had earls for grandfathers on both sides of the 
house, but enjoyed no title herself, confessed to me 
that she was dying to be " My lady." I said to this 
scion of illustrious houses: "You surely wouldn't 
be the wife of a knight ? " " Oh, yes, I would," she 
replied; " anything to be ^ My lady.' " 

Besides all these, there are various official people 
with temporary titles or precedence, but as a rule the 
members of the Government gain little in rank by 
being in office. The Prime Minister himself has no 
precedence by virtue of his place, and I have seen 
Mr. Gladstone, when at the head of the Govern- 
ment, go in to dinner after barons of his own crea- 
tion. Even when ministers enjoy a temporary rank 
this never confers precedence on tjieir wives, who, 



K^iNK AND TITLE. 39 

like the wives of bishops and archbishops, can sit at 
the bottom of the table and look up to the top, 
where their husbands are dining by the side of 
duchesses. When I first observed the little regard 
paid to official rank in England, I expressed my 
surprise, but was quickly told : " Oh ! we respect the 
substance, not the shadow." An American would 
have said that rank was the shadow and power the 
substance, but hereditary, permanent rank is what 
most Englishmen prize above all earthly honors. It 
is the permanency, especially, that they value. The 
supercilious chamberlains of the English court 
would scoff at the punctilio of the officials in 
Washington, arranging themselves according to the 
grades of their short-lived grandeur. 

Rank, indeed, in England is so much regarded 
that if the widow of a peer is remarried to a man 
of lower degree, she retains her former title in the 
later marriage. The famous Lady Waldegrave was 
married four times. By the second marriage she 
became a countess, and though afterward twice 
married to commoners, she remained a countess to 
the end. Her invitations at one time read : " Mr. 
Fortescue and Lady Waldegrave request the hon- 
or." Finally Mr. Fortescue was created Baron 
Carlingford, but still she retained her earlier title, 
for otherwise she must have descended to the rank 
of baroness. And this was in strict accordance 
witli rule. The books lay down that as the nobility 



40 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

are all pares, peers, a peeress need not lose her 
higher rank because she is married to a nobleman 
of lower degree. 

But this is law for the peers ; it is not law for the 
commoners. Any woman, except a peeress who 
marries a peer, merges the highest rank she may 
have enjoyed in the dignity of her husband. The 
daughter of a marquis or a duke takes rank of a 
baroness, but if she marries a baron she forfeits her 
superior degree. There was an instance of this a 
few years ago, when the daughter of the Marquis 
of Ely married a Mr. Egerton. As her husband was 
a commoner, she preserved her precedence. They 
were Mr. and Lady Charlotte Egerton. But by 
and by Mr. Egerton was made a baron, and then 
Lady Charlotte applied to the Queen for permission 
to retain her former rank, but was refused. She 
was compelled to become a baroness. 

A still more striking example of this extreme re- 
gard for precedence was that of Lady Stratheden, not 
now living. She was made a baroness in her own 
right, and subsequently her husband was created 
Baron Campbell. But Stratheden, being the older 
peerage by two or three years, had precedence of 
Campbell. So they went about as Lord Campbell 
and Lady Stratheden. But once, it is said, at an 
hotel, where the names were thus inscribed, the 
manager went to the husband and asked him quiet- 
ly : " Couldn't you call her Lady Campbell 'i " 



EAlfK AND TITLE. 41 

The same sentiment inspired the present Lord 
Chief Justice of England, who, when he was offered 
a peerage, requested that it should be given to his 
father; not from filial regard or reverence, but that 
he might himself inherit the title, and thus be the 
second lord. Thej dislike to be considered " crea- 
tions.*' As the famous Lady Ashburton declared : 
" We don't like the honors that are earned." A 
still more important personage is said not long ago 
to have exclaimed : " The Garter is almost the 
only distinction left that those fellows of talent can- 
not gain." It is usually conferred on persons of at 
least the rank of duke, and rarely with any refer- 
ence to ability or character. It is one of the honors 
that are not " earned." 



IV. 
PRIMOGENITURE. 

The aristocracy in England not only monopo- 
lizes the highest social honors of the kingdom, it 
possesses one-fifth of the soil, and is master of the 
time and services of immense numbers of the popu- 
lation, millions of whom live upon its estates or 
occupy its tenements, from the hovels of Killarney 
to the mansions of Belgravia. Although of late 
years the nobility has declined in political power, it 
still retains an important influence. One House of 
Parliament is composed exclusively of its members, 
and more than half* the highest ofiices of every 
Government are taken from its body. It fills a 
large proportion of the best places in the Church, 
the army and the navy, and in diplomacy. It con- 
stitutes, with those whom it draws about it, and, 
directly or indirectly, influences and controls, what 
are called, and correctly, the governing classes of 
England. 

The outward splendor of the peers may be imag- 
ined from the advice of the Shah of Persia to the 
Prince of Wales. That Eastern potentate had been 



PRIMOGENITUEE. 43 

entertained by the Duke of Sutherland at one of 
his estates, where the grounds and mansions were 
probably more palatial than any the royal savage 
had ever seen ; and he is said to have declared to 
the Heir Apparent : " I should behead that duke. 
He is too magnificent for a subject." Something 
of the same sort, though probably not carried so 
far, must have been in Her Majesty's mind some 
years ago ; for, as she was quitting a ball at Stafford 
House, another residence of the same nobleman, 
the sovereign ^aid to the duchess : " I shall leave 
your palace and go home to my house." 

In order to retain its importance, the aristocracy 
must be kept small in numbers, and this is accom- 
plished by the infliction of immense wrongs upon 
the greater portion of its own members. Only one 
child can inherit the principal honors and posses- 
sions of the family. All the others are of inferior 
rank and consequence from their birth. In the en- 
forcement of this rule the English aristocracy is 
more rigorous than any other in the world. The 
continental titles descend for the most part to all 
the children, and whole families continue noble for 
centuries. But the English maintain the impor- 
tance of a house by the sacrifice of all its sons and 
daughters to the head. Even the wife of one peer 
and the mother of another is immolated on the 
altar of family pride. A woman who has been a 
duchess abdicates when her son comes to his title. 



44 AKISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

she hands over the family jewels to her successor, is 
turned out of the mansion where she once presided, 
and although she retains the title of duchess, it is 
with the prefix of dowager, to indicate her fallen 
state ; while the brothers and sisters, bred in luxury 
and splendor in their father's house, descend in one 
day to comparative indigence and insignificance. 
The brother thinks nothing of requiring them to 
leave, and they accept their fate as inevitable. 
They have always known it was to come, and are, 
perhaps, somewhat prepared for their downfall. 

A nobleman now living is very generally cen- 
sured because, having no sons, he has settled his 
unentailed estates upon his daughters, who thus 
will inherit fortunes which otherwise would have 
gone to his successor in the peerage. It is consid- 
ered that he had no right to divert the estates away 
from the title, both having descended to him from 
the same ancestor. Even he, however, settled the 
bulk of his property on one daughter, leaving the 
other comparatively poor. 

Circumstances and conditions like these neces- 
sarily have an unhappy effect upon the family re- 
lation. There cannot but be heart-burnings and 
discontent at the unnatural inequaUties of fortune 
in a single household. The disparity between the 
deference paid to one brother by guests and ser- 
vants, equals and dependants, and the indifierence 
shown to another cannot but be galling to him who 



PEIMOGENITUEE. 46 

is set aside. The eldest son, even in childhood, 
knows that all is for him, that he is the superior. 
The younger children are early taught that they 
are only sojourners in their father's house, while 
their brother is a noble by birth, the future master 
and tlie head of the family. The next heir can 
hardly mourn very deeply if his elder brother dies, 
and there must be times when terrible temptations 
arise. A duke once said to a friend of mine, as his 
only son, a child of three years old, was taken out 
of the room : " There goes my natural enemy." 

I remember the son of an earl talking to me with 
tears in his eyes of the lot of the younger members 
of a great family. He said he was repelled by the 
mothers whom he met in society as if he had the 
plague, lest he should fall in love with their daugh- 
ters. He was to take his place almost without the 
sphere in which he had been born. He supposed 
he should become a steward on some nobleman's 
estate, or perhaps manage for his brother the prop- 
erty to which he was as much attached as the one 
who was to inherit all. But he suddenly checked 
himself, and declared that not for the world would 
he have it otherwise; nothing would compensate 
for the ruin of the old English families. The 
youngster was handsome, well-mannered, and evi- 
dently in love with some girl beyond his reach. 
He was cleverer by far than the man who would 
become the chief of his house, better fitted to bear 



46 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

the honors, but the accident of birth had inter- 
ivened. It did not seem to him so great good for- 
tune to be the son of an earl — so near the prize, and 
yet excluded from the race. 

]S"evertheless, the cadets of great houses are 
better off than if the aristocracy did not exist ; 
better off than if they were humbler born. The 
sons and brothers of peers enjoy enormous advan- 
tages at the start. They have a high place in 
society, powerful friends, prestige, and sometimes 
opportunities to marry well, in spite of the dow- 
agers. As a rule they are placed in the army or 
the Church, or pushed in politics or diplomacy, or 
possibly the law. Of late years, it is true, they 
have begun to take to trade, and there are sons of 
dukes who are " in tea." But this is not approved 
of in society, and aristocrats are not often reduced 
to such extremity. 

After all, it is the mothers and daughters whose 
fate is most deplorable. Nothing in the whole 
system is so barbaric as the treatment of the 
women. Nothing is more pitiable than the lot of 
ladies delicately reared, accustomed from childhood 
to profusion and magnificence, and suddenly re- 
duced to a pittance for an income. The daughters 
of a ducal house, the annual revenues of which 
cannot be less than a million of dollars, receive at 
their marriage, portions that do not amount to 
$3,000 a year; and this is considered a generous 



PEEMOGENirUEE. 47 

provision. I know a lady of less degree whose 
allowance from her father's estate is £200 a year, 
while her brother's is £10,000. For these unfort- 
unates there is only one escape from comparative 
and often absolute poverty, and that is marriage. 
This is what makes the marriage market of London 
such a by-word. A well-known peeress, famous 
for the matrimonial successes of her daughters, is 
called in aristocratic circles ''professional." The 
men declare it unfair in her to compete with ama- 
teurs, and I heard one of her acquaintances say 
that he was present the night she " caught York." 

These high-born women must find husbands, or 
become enforced, and often unwelcome, pensioners 
on the bounty of brothers or more distant relatives. 
Then there is the mother, the great lady, super- 
seded sometimes, not by the wife of her son, which 
would be more tolerable, but by some far-off cousin 
or life-long enemy. The dower-house is prepared, 
the dowry Is paid, and she goes to her social suttee. 

And it will not do to suppose that the head of 
a great family is always ready to assemble his 
relations about him, always willing to invite their 
visits or offer them homes. When a man comes 
into his titles and possessions he usually has his 
own wife and his own children to care for. The 
wife is indifferent to his kindred, and the new peer 
often forgets or ignores them altogether. The 
brothers and sisters and cousins of the master are 



48 ARISTOCRACY EN ENGLAND. 

hardly the most frequent visitors in great English 
houses ; inmates they are more rarely still. And 
when they are received they are careful not to pre- 
sume too far. They all look meekly up to their 
chief; they are proud to be connected with him, 
happy to accept his invitations and his charities. 
They are retainers and dependents, and there is and 
can be no equality between them, as a rule. 

Of course, there are many families united by the 
warmest and purest regard. There are parents 
who insure their lives and economize their incomes 
in order to secure the independence of their 
younger children. There are great houses in 
which the chief considers himself bound to provide 
for and assist the cadets. The present Duke of 
Bedford, when he came into millions, settled on 
each of his brothers fifty thousand pounds. But 
conduct such as this is not the rule, and if it were, 
the influence of the institution remains, whatever 
the merit of the individual. 

That influence makes the father lavish pride and 
affection and interest on the favored one, while 
even the mother, anticipating, perhaps, the time 
when he will be the arbiter of her fate, is careful 
not to thwart him in favor of her younger children. 
That influence makes the heir not seldom selfish, 
self-sufiicient, over-bearing, and all the others sub- 
servient, or envious and dissatisfied. It makes 
marriages for money, among both men and women, 



PKIMOGENITURE. 49 

common, and not altogether inexcusable. It made 
one duke regard his eldest son as his " natural 
enemy." 

Primogeniture, however, in England, is matter 
of law. It cannot be avoided. If a man is born a 
peer, he must remain a peer, whether he likes it or 
no. He cannot be divested of the dignity, even 
though he may not choose to claim the title. In 
1796 the Earl of Berkeley married a dairymaid, 
a previous marriage with w^hom was declared by 
the House of Lords " not proven," so that the chil- 
dren, born prior to 1796, could not inherit. The 
son first born after that date was of course the heir ; 
but he refused to assume a title that reflected on his 
mother's fame— an act of chivalry seldom surpassed 
in the annals of any nobility. He died not long 
ago, having been known for more than half a cen- 
tury as the ''Honorable Mr. Berkeley," though 
legally he was the sixth earl. But the title and 
honors descended to his heirs. He could not divert 
the succession. Nobility is in the blood, and noth- 
ing but an attainder can corrupt the quality. 

Thus, distant descendants may claim a long-for- 
gotten birthright, and titles and honors supposed 
extinct for centuries may be revived. The earldom 
of Devon had remained dormant from 1566 until 
1831, when the heir, who was a clerk of the Parlia- 
ment, and engaged in examining the records, dis- 
covered the original patent of the peerage. In 
4 



50 AEISTOCRACT IN ENGLAND. 

ordinary cases the title descends to the heirs male 
" of the body " of the original patentee ; but in this 
instance the words " of the body " did not occur. 
The title, therefore, descended to the heirs collat- 
eral, when those of the body became extinct. The 
last earl had died without issue in the reign of 
Bloody Mary (or, as the English more reverently 
style her, Mary I.), and the title and honors were 
supposed to be extinct. But when the patent was 
found the clerk of the Parliament was able to prove 
his descent in the collateral line, and was declared 
the lawful Earl of Devon after two hundred and 
sixty years. Meanwhile, the head of the family 
had been created a baronet, but, disdaining the in- 
ferior title, he never took out his patent. Never- 
theless, he was always styled Sir William in com- 
missions from the King, and his son was the second 
baronet. The antiquity of the family indeed reached 
back beyond the earldom. Edward I. was a legiti- 
mate ancestor, and Gibbon turns aside to record 
their history while reciting the fate of the Roman 
empire. 

But though titles must descend according to 
the rule of primogeniture, the land can be entailed 
for three lives only. If a man dies without a will, 
his real estate falls to his eldest son, but a number 
of sudden deaths might prevent the heirs of impor- 
tant families from succeeding to the property. But 
titles without wealth would be barren honors ; and 



PRIMOGENITURE. 51 

to secure the all-important connection of property 
with rank a device has been contrived to which the 
aristocracy habitually resort, in evasion of the in- 
tention of the law. When the eldest son of a peer 
or important commoner marries, the custom is for 
the father and the son to unite in making an entail 
for their own lives and the life of the unborn son of 
the living heir. Thus every ordinary successor is 
born a tenant for life ; he cannot himself alienate 
the property, and when he arrives at his majority 
he is ready in his turn to unite with his father to 
maintain the family dignity and provide for the 
greatness of one unborn child at the expense of all 
the others. 

It is this principle of primogeniture, thus secured, 
which is at the basis of all the importance of 
the English aristocracy. "Without it the nobility 
would promptly lose its pre-eminence. If all the 
descendants of a nobleman continued noble, the 
number would soon be so great that nobility would 
be no distinction. If all the children shared the 
wealth, the properties would be divided and sub- 
divided till the pomp and circumstance of the 
peerage would disappear. It is because one man 
inherits all that tlie grandeur is permanent; be- 
cause the heir has a quarter of a million a year, and 
his brother less than a thousand pounds, that the 
family dignity is maintained. When primogen- 
iture is abolished the aristocracy will be near its fall. 



PRECEDENCE. 

PRiMOGENmjRE is the foundation on wliicli the 
aristocracy is established, and the prop by which it 
is sustained ; but precedence is the capital and 
crown of the edifice, the outward and visible sign 
by which as much as by pomp and show, the nobility 
asserts its superiority. For whoever acquires wealth, 
by whatever means, can of course command houses, 
estates, and retinues, and all the varied paraphernalia 
of luxury and display ; but in England all this, 
without precedence, profiteth nothing. All the rest, 
to the ambitious aspirant, is but sounding brass and 
tinkling cymbals. 

Precedence is not a matter of courtesy, nor often 
of mere custom, however ancient ; it is the subject 
of absolute law. Its violation is actionable. One 
person is by law entitled to go before another per- 
son. The precedence of every individual of rank 
in the kingdom is regulated either by express 
statute, by letters patent, or by the common law. 
You will find it all set down in Blackstone and his 
successors. An earl of England goes before an earl 



PRECEDENCE. 53 

of Scotland. A viscount's eldest son precedes an 
earl's younger sons. The daughters of a nobleman 
outrank the wives of the younger sons of the same 
peer. The intricacy is involved in the last degree, 
and when a woman of quality gives a dinner she 
often consults the books to settle the places of her 
company. For the married daughters of an earl 
must not be put before the unmarried daughters of 
a duke, nor the daughter of a peer of later creation 
before the daughter of one of the same rank whose 
creation is earlier. These are the ladies, a little 
distant from the sun, who insist most rigorously 
upon their reflected glories. Precedence, poor 
things, is all they have at times, and you cannot 
expect them to yield it readily. 

There is, however, one result of the rage for rank 
that is refreshing. The precedence of the younger 
sons and daughters of the nobility continues 
through life. It matters not how poor they may 
become, their place and their titles remain ; so that 
mere wealth cannot elbow aside the distinction that 
comes from lineage. 'No rich upstart can precede 
the broken-down woman of birth, and the fact that 
poverty and privation may coexist with even exalted 
rank depreciates the imdue influence of mammon. 
The poor aristocrats can never lose their conse- 
quence in a society where a title may come to them 
suddenly by the death of a distant relative; and the 
mother of a possible duke must always be important 



54: AEISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

to families whose daughters he may one day deign 
to ennoble. 

For these potentates of the peerage can marry 
whom they please, and their wives step into the 
grade beside themselves. The Marquis of Salisbury 
is descended from the famous Lord Burleigh, so 
that his family has been noble since the time of 
Elizabeth, but he married the daughter of a lawyer. 
The wife afterward became intimate with a peeress 
more highly descended even than the late Premier. 
I asked this lady once whether her friend was of 
family that entitled her, according to English no- 
tions, to so grand an alliance; and she, herself 
sprung from royal lines, replied : " I mean to say 
that Lord Salisbury could marry whom he chose." 
As Marchioness of Salisbury the lawyer's daughter 
took precedence of her high-born friend. 

She once had a greater triumph still. Many 
years ago her husband quarrelled with Lord Bea- 
consfield, but in 1874, when the Tories returned to 
power, it was found impossible for Beacon sfield to 
form a cabinet unless the two were reconciled. 
Great efforts were therefore made to bring them 
together. But Lord Salisbury was stubborn, and 
the same peeress assured me that the Duchess of 
Marlborough literally went on her knees to Lady 
Salisbury and implored her to persuade her husband 
to serve under his enemy. Lady Salisbury was won, 
Lord Salisbury consented, and, as a result, he 



PKECEDENCE. 55 

became Prime Minister of England ; for had he not 
submitted to Beaconsfield, he never would have 
succeeded him. 

Precedence is a subject of so much consequence 
that no tribunal below the crown can be trusted to 
determine its finer points, and the difficult ques- 
tions are referred in the last resort to the Queen, 
whose fiat in these matters is irreversible. Her 
Majesty fully realizes the importance of the prerog- 
ative, one of the few she yet retains in all its ancient 
plenitude, and devotes her best abilities to the dis- 
tribution of justice in so grave a cause. But even 
into royal minds partiality will sometimes penetrate, 
and when her own family is concerned, the decisions 
of the sovereign have not always been received 
without suspicion of favor. She gave great ofience 
by insisting that the Prince Consort should go 
before the Prince of Wales ; and, had her husband 
lived, it is doubtful whether the English would have 
submitted to the regulation. The future king should 
have preceded his father, by all the unnatural rules 
of rank and royalty. More recently still Her Maj- 
esty has outraged the feelings, not only of her own 
nobility, but of the reigning families of Europe, by 
conferring the title of Royal Highness on the hus- 
band of her daughter Beatrice, when he has a right 
only to be called " Serene." 

Precedence is a question that comes up constantly 
in all the ceremonies of the aristocracy; once a day, 



56 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

at least, to everybody, for everybody must dine, 
and everybody goes to dinner according to degree. 
I have seen at German watering-places English 
women of birth, sisters and sisters-in-law, as punc- 
tilious in yielding and taking place at a table d^hdte 
as if they had been at court. The last night I dined 
in England two earls were leaving the room to- 
gether, and as the one whose rank was more recent 
held back for his senior, he said laughingly, but 
he meant it all the same : "I must not go before 
my betters." 

Americans, even, may become involved in the 
labyrinthine mysteries. An American envoy was 
once visiting at a famous house where the Lord 
Lieutenant of the county was also a guest, and the 
hostess went to dinner, according to rule, with the 
minister. But at this the wife of the Lord Lieuten- 
ant was up in arms; she searched the books and 
declared that her husband represented the Queen, 
and therefore should precede a foreign minister. 
The gentlemen staying at the house also looked up 
the authorities, but disagreed with her. Still she 
remained dissatisfied, until finally the hostess went 
to the minister and begged him, in order to pacify 
the punctilious peeress, to allow the Lord Lieuten- 
ant to precede him for a single night ; and the 
American was amiable, and waived his privilege. 
I think I said that precedence is not controlled by 
courtesy. 



PRECEDENCE. 67 

Another time it was the minister's wife who in- 
sisted on her prerogative. For Americans who live 
in this atmosphere are susceptible to the influence. 
One of our representatives was staying at a ducal 
house, and the first night the duke took in the min- 
ister's wife to dinner ; but the next night, to vary 
or divide his courtesies, he oifered his arm to an- 
other lady, whereat the minister's wife was wroth, 
and, being the head of her own family, she insisted 
on leaving the house, and the democratic envoy cut 
short his visit because his wife was not taken in 
every night at the head of the company. 

These difficulties extend into the loftiest regions. 
The Yiceroy of Ireland represents Her Majesty, 
and during his term has precedence even of the 
Prince of Wales. It is said that the Heir Apparent 
dislikes to visit Ireland because he is unwilling to 
follow the Yiceroy. This functionary, indeed, has 
a little court of his own, where, as in all provincial 
circles, the etiquette is stiffer than in grander 
spheres. When the Yiceroy dines out everybody 
rises as he enters the room, and when the ladies 
leave the table each approaches and makes him in 
turn the courtesy that is due to royalty. Even his 
wife must do this in public, though I doubt if she 
does it at home. 

I have known earls take their own daughters to 
table, because these were of higher rank than any 
one else in the room ; and at royal houses the hosts 



58 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

invariably precede their guests, unless the guests 
themselves are royal. I have even seen a child go 
in to dinner at the head of a distinguished company. 
At a country-house where a foreign minister and his 
wife were guests, the host had not returned from 
the hunting-field in time for dinner. There were 
several members of the Government present, men 
of title and consideration in English circles ; but 
the ladies of the family sent to the school-room for 
the eldest son, a boy of thirteen, to represent his 
father, and he, as a viscount, took precedence of all 
the gentlemen present, and ofiered his arm to the 
wife of the minister. 

As a rule, scant deference is shown to Americans 
in this matter of precedence. Neither hospitality 
nor courtesy is said to be in question, but the law. 
Now, the law may be very well for Englishmen, by 
whom and for whom it was made, but it can hardly 
apply to foreigners who are neither referred to in 
its provisions nor comprehended in its denomina- 
tions or degrees. The English, however, habitually 
apply their own rules and their own ideas on every 
subject to everybody else. They recognize neither 
military, nor literary, nor even political distinction 
among themselves when there is question of rank ; 
a general goes behind his own aid-de-camp if the 
latter is a lord and the general is not ; the greatest 
writer in the land. Browning or Froude, or, until 
the other day, Tennyson, would be preceded by any 



PRECEDENCE. 59 

blockhead of a baron; and tlie Prime Minister, if 
a commoner, gives way to peers of his own creation. 
So, American gentlemen, and ladies too, of what- 
ever consideration at home, are nsnallj sent to the 
foot of the table, because they possess no English 
titles. European dignities are recognized, for they 
correspond to those in the English peerage, but our 
imofficial countrymen do not usually fare so well. 
Both ex-President Fillmore and ex-President Pierce 
were in London soon after the expiration of their 
terms of office, and dined at different times with 
different Ministers for Foreign Affairs. Each was 
sent to table without a lady and behind the rest of 
the company. They were plain gentlemen, it was 
said, and, "if the Americans give their ex-Presi- 
dents no rank, why should we ? " General Grant, 
it is true, except in one conspicuous instance, was 
given precedence of everybody in England below 
the royal family, but his case had neither parallel 
nor precedent. 

There are, however, English houses where simply 
as strangers the place of honor is given to Ameri- 
cans. This is, of course, among people who have 
seen much of the world, and discovered that even 
in civilized nations usages may exist different from 
those of England, and that persons of consequence 
can be found in other countries who yet are not the 
bearers of English titles. The greater the house 
the greater the consideration an American is likely 



60 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

to receive. If he dines with a duke, the chances 
are that he will go in with the duchess ; if the host 
is a recent arrival in the great world, he may have 
no lady, and will probably enter last. 

But the rule does not always hold. I was dining 
once with a woman of rank who was also a per- 
sonal friend. The company included two marquises, 
one of whom was a cousin of the hostess and a man 
of cosmopolitan breeding. Before dinner this no- 
bleman came up to me and said : 

" I have been telling my cousin that you ought 
to take her in, but she says ' No ; ' she likes you 
very well, but you can't go before a marquis. I in- 
sisted that, as a foreigner and an official, you should 
precede ; but she will not yield." 

Mr. Lecky, the historian, was present, and I was 
then new in English society ; so, with all the sim- 
plicity of a republican, I replied : 

" Mr. Lecky is the most distinguished man in the 
room. Shouldn't he take Lady Mary ? " 

But the liberal marquis at once exclaimed : 

" Oh ! Mr. Lecky is an Englishman. He must 
take his place." 

So Lady Mary went in with a vapid youth of 
twenty-two, because he was a marquis, and the 
most eminent person at dinner had no lady, and 
went last. 



VI. 
THE PRINCE OF WALES. 



I SHALL never forget the scene in St. Paul's Cathe- 
dral when the highest personages in England were 
gathered to attend the Thanksgiving for the re- 
covery of the Prince of Wales from a serious ill- 
ness. The immense building was crowded to its ut- 
most capacity. Nave and choir and aisles, and even 
galleries erected for the occasion, were thronged 
with patricians and functionaries of importance; 
clergymen and prelates and lawyers and judges in 
their gowns ; officers of the army and navy in full 
uniform ; peers and the eldest sons of peers and 
members of the House of Commons in levee dress. 
Every one was in his place by nine o'clock, and the 
doors were closed hours before the Queen arrived. 
The great space under the dome was allotted to 
members of Parliament and the diplomatic corps, 
and in the centre of this area a dais had been 
erected, covered with crimson cloth and ruled off 
with gilded bars to form a sort of pew. The floor 
of this structure was so high that its occupants stood 
with their feet on a level with the heads of the 



62 AKISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

peers and the members of the Government, and 
into the pew thus raised the Queen and the royal 
family were ushered, every one in the edifice rising. 
The son of an earl shook up the cushions, and the 
Archbishop of Canterbury thanked God in the 
name of the people of England for the recovery of 
the young man of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, 
who, with his mother and brother and sisters, knelt 
above the heads of the nobility and the Govern- 
ment. 

But this enforced prostration of all the distinction 
and dignity of England at the very feet of the royal 
family in the house of God was the merest of mock- 
eries. The Queen herself is only the shadow of a 
potentate, and the Prince of Wales is insignificant 
in everything but ceremony. An absolute absti- 
nence from politics is dictated by the nation, not 
only to the sovereign, but to the entire reigning 
family. It is not thought proper for the Prince of 
Wales to signify a preference for either party in the 
State. He holds his place on condition that he 
makes no eflfort to influence afiTairs ; he must be as 
gracious to a Conservative minister as to a Liberal ; 
he must take sides neither for nor against any prom- 
inent measure. The pill is gilded by the assurance 
that he belongs to the whole country, and not to a 
part ; that he is above the strife of factions, and too 
great to be interested in intrigues for place. All of 
which may be true, but it leaves him a vapid and 



THE PRINCE OF WALES. 63 

meaningless life, devoted to forms and filled up 
with frivolities. 

The Queen, indeed, goes through the ceremonies 
of authority ; she holds privy councils' and receives 
ambassadors ; and, if not present at cabinet meet- 
ings, the result of them is usually announced to her 
before it is made known to the world at large. She 
reads despatches, and still, at times, discusses meas- 
ures of importance with the Prime Minister. But 
the Prince of Wales, the future King, is never sum- 
moned to her counsels. She seems to revenge her- 
self on him for the exclusion from power inflicted 
on herself. There is no pretence of consulting him. 
He can hardly be familiar with the forms in which 
he must one day bear a part, or, so far as practice 
goes, with the principles by which he must be 
guided. He will come to the throne as utterly un- 
accustomed to its graver duties as his own son, if at 
any moment both Queen and Prince of Wales were 
suddenly to die. Opportunities for observation, of 
course, he shares with everybody in the kingdom ; 
good sense he has not often seemed to lack ; appre- 
ciation of the diflaculties and dehcacies of his politi-" 
cal situation he has repeatedly displayed to a greater 
degree than the Queen ; but the absolute experience 
which he might have acquired had he, the imme- 
diate heir to the throne, a man of more than forty 
years, been summoned to the royal side in inter- 
views with ministers, or consultations such as must 



64 AEISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

occur under even a constitutional monarchy be- 
tween sovereign and statesmen — of this he has been 
altogether deprived. 

Whether it is the ordinary jealousy of a monarch 
for an heir, which has prevailed against the wisdom 
of a ruler and the partiality of a parent, or some 
other cause, I never heard ; but the fact remains, 
that the Prince of Wales has had no opportunity to 
learn from his mother the lessons in practical sov- 
ereignty which the Queen herself received from her 
sagacious consort, or has acquired from the experi- 
ence of nearly half a century. 

This is unfortunate for the Prince himself, for the 
country, and for the ministers who may hereafter 
have to deal with him. I once asked a prominent 
Englishman what would happen if a prince should 
come to the throne, ambitious at once and able, de- 
termined to rule as well as to reign. My friend at 
first answered evasively that there was no danger 
of the conjuncture under the present family ; but 
when I pressed him further, he admitted that, in 
such an event, the monarch, if he persisted, would 
lose his crown. Nobody tells a prince such things 
in ordinary conversation, but the warning might be 
conveyed if he were present when the Queen is 
sometimes delicately informed of the necessity of 
subordinating her will to that of the nation. The 
Heir Apparent is surrounded by servitors and court- 
iers, always bowing and backing out before him, till 



THE PRINCE OF WALES. 65 

he might easily forget the emptiness of the forms 
and the impotence of the sway to which he will 
succeed ; and if he were not alive to the reality, a 
harsh awakening might one day come to him. 

It must, however, be acknowledged that His 
Royal Highness is scrupulous in conforming to the 
political necessities. He betrays no preferences, ex- 
cept personal ones, to which he has a right. He in- 
volves himself in no difficulties with either party in 
politics, he makes no attempt to step beyond the 
limits laid down for him, and confines himseK 
strictly to the ceremonious and arduous life of 
pleasure and parade which his fate and his mother 
have decided that he shall lead. It is often said 
that he does not expect to succeed to the throne, 
but lives in dread of the evil day that has come to 
so many of his royal relatives. Apparently, he is 
determined to do nothing himself to pr^ipitate the 
political deluge. 

Debarred from all participation in affairs of state, 
he has become a great authority in etiquette. Both 
the Queen and the Prince of Wales devote them- 
selves to the study of this great science with a fer- 
vor that makes it the important business of their 
lives. Perhaps it compensates for the sacrifice of 
higher ambitions ; and in settling points of preced- 
ence and determining questions of ceremony they 
may seem to themselves to retain some of the 
prerogatives of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. The 
5 



66 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

Queen corrects the court circular daily; she ar- 
ranges the order in which the guests sit at her 
table ; she supervises the invitation lists to court 
balls — at which she never is present — and the 
Prince carefully inspects the book kept at his gate, 
in which visitors inscribe their names. 

Sometimes the royal personages do not agree on 
points of this high consequence, and then Her Maj- 
esty asserts the supremacy of the Crown. You can- 
not be asked to the Queen's ball unless you have 
been at court the same year. For very great per- 
sonages the rule may be relaxed, but in ordinary 
cases it is immutable. Once upon a time, however, 
a fair American arrived too late in the season for a 
drawing-room, and, in spite of etiquette, she deter- 
mined to go to a ball. But the American Minister 
declined to ask the court to break its own regula- 
tions, and our undaunted countrywoman, who bad 
met the Heir Apparent in society, applied to the 
Prince himself. His Royal Highness likes pretty 
women, and pretty Americans quite as well as any 
others ; so he good-naturedly promised that if the 
American Minister would make the request the in- 
vitation should arrive. But when this was announced 
to the wily diplomatist from the United States, that 
functionary still had the fear of the court before his 
eyes, and with the art of a Machiavelli he wrote to 
the Lord Chamberlain that, " at the instance of the 
Prince of Wales he had the honor to apply, etc." 



THE PRINCE OF WALES. 67 

The card was sent and the importunate American 
went to the ball. But the august Queen of Great 
Britain and Ireland was indignant at the infringe- 
ment on her prerogative. She informed the heir 
to the throne that the ball was her ball, not his ; 
and the Prince was vexed with the minister, and 
the minister was vexed with his compatriot ; and 
altogether the excitement aroused in exalted circles 
was very like what occurred at Olympus when Juno 
and her progeny were interested in the affairs of 
earth and the gods took different sides. 

The lot of the Prince is not without other trials. 
Nobody in the kingdom is harder worked or under- 
goes mofa fatigue of a certain wearing sort than 
the Prince and Princess of Wales, and in a less de- 
gree the other members of the reigning family. 
They are not only deprived of all privacy, not only 
always in the world and before the world, always 
attended by persons of consequence and exposed to 
comment and criticism from fastidious tastes and 
censorious tongues, but they are dragged from one 
ceremony to another, from a gallery to a hospital, 
from a levee to a procession, from a dinner to a ball, 
till life must often become a weariness. Yet they 
must never fail to keep an engagement, and they 
are bound always to display the especial "politeness 
of kings '' — punctuality. They must be civil when 
they are worn out, and gracious when they are 
sleepy; they must remember the names and faces 



68 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

of the tens of thousands to whom their recognition 
is an honor ; for all this is their trade. This is how 
they earn their living. And they play their part 
well. They are trained to it from childhood. They 
do remember people ; they are punctual and polite ; 
all of which should be borne in mind when people 
carp and criticise. 

The Prince is personally popular among those 
who surround him closest. His invitations are an 
honor as well as a command, and when he visits a 
country-house the list of the guests who are to meet 
him is submitted for his inspection. The Princess 
does not always accompany her consort on these 
occasions. As sometimes happens with families that 
are not royal, there are houses favored by the hus- 
band which the wife does not frequent, though not 
so many of these as when the Prince was younger. 
They both seem to have their American favorites. 
A number of our compatriots have been asked, not 
only to Marlborough House, but to Sandringham ; 
but it must be owned these have sometimes been 
ladies and gentlemen at whose success Americans 
at home were not a little surprised. The Prince, 
however, cares nothing for the social antecedents of 
his transatlantic friends. He cannot distinguish the 
delicate gradations in a democratic society so visible 
to some of the democrats themselves. When he was 
told by a Bostonian whose family had been " good" 
for nearly three generations that the American 



THE PKINCE OF WALES. 69 

Minister of that day was a self-made man, the 
Prince replied to the aristocratic republican : "I 
thought you were all self-made in America." 

Perhaps the Prince is not to be blamed. He lives 
in an atmosphere where incense is constantly offered 
him, and dukes and duchesses prostrate themselves 
before the royal family with something of the idea 
of Bunthorne in '' Patience ": " If this great person- 
age is too great for me, what a very great personage 
this personage must be ! " 

For the reverence shown by the aristocracy for 
royalty is greater than that of the people at large. 
The people generally know very little about royalty. 
The Queen secludes herself, and the other members 
of the royal family live so far apart from and above 
the multitude that they hardly enter its thoughts. 
But the nobility have the Queen and her children 
constantly in mind. They must go to levees and 
drawing-rooms ; they are invited to state balls and 
concerts. The personal attendants of royalty are 
taken exclusively from the aristocracy. During 
the London season the members of the aristocracy 
are continually meeting the royal family, and con- 
stantly reminded of the vast difference in rank 
between the highest of themselves and the Princes 
of the Blood. 

The genuflections they must make in the pres- 
ence of royalty ; the deference in tone and manner 
they must display if addressed by royalty ; the red 



70 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

carpet that must be laid down when royalty visits a 
house; the ceremonies of reception and departure; 
the separate table at which royalty must eat at great 
entertainments ; the fact that one should not leave 
a room until royalty chooses to do so ; that one can- 
not speak first, nor broach a subject of conversation 
with royal personages ; that you must neither pre- 
sent yourself to them, nor by any chance turn your 
back toward them; even the apparently insignifi- 
cant matter that you say "Sir" to a Prince, and 
"Madam" or "Ma'am" to the Queen and the 
Princesses, and to nobody else in England — all this 
deepens the impression on an ordinary mind, and 
makes many look up to the members of the royal 
family with an obsequiousness which, to one who 
does not share it, is amusing. 

One of the most eminent of British statesmen 
once said to me : " Every Englishman is at heart a 
lackey. We all want something above us; some- 
thing to — to " He hesitated for a word, and I 

suggested : " To kotow to ? " 

" Yes," said he, " to kotow to." 



VII. 
AMERICANS AT COURT. 

The whole happiness of the American Minister 
to England is marred by the ever-recm-ring neces- 
sity of presenting his country people at court. 
Most Americans abroad consider that the principal 
business of their representatives is to procure them 
invitations to balls or tickets to picture galleries. 
The London Legation is especially beset with gen- 
teel but importunate democrats, determined to 
explore the mysteries that surround the effete in- 
stitutions of royalty, to behold in person the gold 
sticks-in-waiting, the gentlemen-at-arms in their 
helmets and phimes, the maids of honor, and the 
mistresses of the robes. 

They might, it is true, do all this from a position 
in the palace galleries, out of which respectable 
English folk not grand enough themselves to go to 
court are content to look upon the procession of 
their betters as it passes toward the inner apart- 
ments. But no true American acknowledges any 
"betters;" the very word is stricken from our 
prayer-books. The citizens of the great republic 



72 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

will stand in no outer galleries; they mnst be 
ushered into the very presence-chamber of royalty. 

No other minister is so subject to this demand. 
It is only once in a while that the ambassador 
from Russia or Germany is called upon to present a 
countryman to the Queen. Aristocrats, apparently, 
are not so anxious as republicans to frequent foreign 
courts. They are familiar with the spectacle and 
fatigued with the etiquette at home. Besides which, 
only those entitled to be presented to their own 
sovereign can be received by the English Queen, 
and the regulations at Berlin and St. Petersburg 
are as rigid as at St. James's, so that applications 
from Russians or Germans are rare. But every 
decent American may know the Chief Magistrate 
of the Union, and therefore, according to the rules, 
he is authorized to ask for a presentation to the 
Queen. Remembering the levees at Washington, 
one can imagine the perplexities of the envoy of a 
democracy. 

But this is not all. The court regulations declare 
that ladies and gentlemen " of distinction " can be 
presented by their minister in the diplomatic circle, 
a privilege which entitles them to remain in the 
presence-chamber during the entire levee or draw- 
ing-room, and usually secures an invitation to a ball. 
Now as all Americans in Europe are persons of dis- 
tinction, they naturally all desire to be presented 
with the diplomatic corps. The women especially, 



AMERICANS AT COURT. 73 

fashionable, or would-be fashionable, insist upon 
this recognition, and besiege the unlucky minister, 
whose torments can be more easily imagined than 
endured. 

American women, however, invariably dress well; 
much better, as a rule, than the English ladies who 
go to court. They also adapt themselves with 
marked facility to unfamiliar circumstances ; and as 
they have only to courtesy and pass before the 
Queen, there is little opportunity to do discredit to 
their country or its representative. It is from no 
fear of a blunder or a scene that the minister is con- 
cerned. It is the numbers from whom he must 
choose that are so appalling. For, after all, the 
drawing-room is for English subjects, and as there 
are always more of these than Her Majesty desires 
to see on such occasions, it is rather hard for her 
and for them to give up the precious time to 
foreigners. 

In self-defence, therefore, and in accordance with 
the traditions of their craft, the wily American 
diplomatists have contrived to fence themselves 
about with rules. They have entered into a pact 
with the court functionaries, themselves nothing 
loath, by virtue of which only four men and four 
women can be presented at one time with the diplo- 
matic coi-ps, and the same number in what is called 
the '^general circle." The roster of men is often 
incomplete, but the occasion is rare when the eight 



74 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

ladies are not all on hand. The minister usually 
requires a letter of introduction from a personal 
acquaintance before sending in the name of one 
entirely unknown to him. But I sometimes used 
to think that the lists were declared full very early 
in the season, although if any one whom the min- 
ister particularly wished to place came later, a place 
was found without all the difficulty that might have 
been anticipated. 

But the gravest question of all is where to draw 
the line between those who are of sufficient " dis- 
tinction " to be presented in the diplomatic circle 
and those who are relegated to " the general." 
Most ministers cut the matter short by announcing 
that, as we have no rank nor class 'distinctions in 
America, presentations in the diplomatic circle must 
be restricted to official persons and their families — 
governors of States, senators, high military or naval 
officers, and the like. Of course stray friends of 
the minister liimseK slip in occasionally, whose 
claim might be disputed, but to be a cousin of 
an envoy, or even of an acting charge d'affaires, 
is to be a " person of distinction," at least in the 
eyes of him who is to decide. The court takes him 
for sponsor, and I never heard but once that a pres- 
entation requested by an American minister was 
refused. 

The court, indeed, is very good to Americans. 
It does not inquire if they are engaged in trade, 



AMEETCANS AT COURT. 75 

although no English merchant can be presented to 
his sovereign without especial claim. It looks not 
too closely to the morals, or the manners of our 
countrymen or country-women, but very carefully 
to their clothes. The rules for dress are never 
relaxed for any Americans except those in the 
legation. All men must wear knee-breeches and 
swords, the court costume, or uniform. As for the 
women, they are only too happy to put on feathers 
and trains and any other frippery that etiquette 
will authorize. 

But still another difficulty sometimes remains 
before an American lady with her unwilling guide 
arrives at the threshold of the court. A minister can 
present only men : and the Queen refuses to allow 
to the daughters of a diplomatist the precedence of 
a minister's wife or the privilege of presenting her 
compatriots, so that if the envoy is unmarried he 
must find some friendly matron to perform the office 
for him. For a long time it was customary, as it 
certainly was becoming, in such a crisis, to ask this 
favor of the wife of the English Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, and the request was gracefully and 
graciously complied with. A few years ago, how- 
ever, a woman whose husband was Foreign Secre- 
tary declined to consider herself bound to present 
American ladies to the Queen, though vouched for 
by the American representative. There have been 
times when such a refusal would have produced a 



76 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

rupture in the relations of sovereign States ; but the 
American Minister meekly submitted to the slight, 
and had recourse to other ladies of his acquaint- 
ance. He always found them willing. Sometimes 
it was the wife of a colleague in the diplomatic 
corps who came to his relief ; sometimes an English 
woman who atoned for the discourtesy of her com- 
patriot. 

When every preliminary is settled the persistent 
fair one, triumphing over the last obstacle, proceeds 
to Buckingham Palace, not, however, with her 
minister or with the lady who is to present her, but 
in her own carriage, for the furbelows and feathers 
take up a deal of room, and two ladies dressed for 
court will crowd the largest coach. If she is to be 
presented in the diplomatic circle her servant has a 
ticket admitting her carriage at a special entrance ; 
she then need not fall into line a mile from the 
palace, but drives direct to the Ambassadors' door, 
and waits only a few moments in the ante-room. 
Then she follows her sponsor, and remains with her 
to the end. 

If she goes to the general circle she must take 
her place in St. James's Park, or still further away, 
prepared to wait patiently for hours, while the 
rabble stare in at her carriage windows and com- 
ment audibly upon her charms, her laces, and her 
jewelry, guessing at her age or the prices of her 
clothes. 



AMERICANS AT COURT. 77 

Nor is it only the outside mob that indulges in 
these investigations. One of our country-women 
told me of an experience she had in the precincts of 
royalty that is worth recording. She had arrived 
at " the pens," as the ante-chambers are irrever- 
ently called by those who frequent them. Tired of 
standing for hours, jostled and trodden on and 
stared at by high-bred dames, the American was 
about to retire from the column, when a lively con- 
test of voices immediately in her rear attracted her 
attention. 

'' I tell you it is." 

" No, it cannot be." 

" But look for yourself" 

Turning to learn the cause of the dispute, the 
stranger found two English ladies turning up her 
train to discover whether or no it was lined with 
lace. Fortunately for her feminine pride the lace 
was real. 

The ball, the object of all these efforts and im- 
portunities, is very much like other balls. The 
dresses of the men are more showy than at a private 
party in America ; but those of the women not so 
brilliant, except that finer jewelry is worn. Court 
trains are not prescribed, nor are feathers indispen- 
sable, though the men are not admitted except in 
uniform or court-dress. I once saw an exception to 
this rule. The Emperor of Brazil wore a black 
coat and trousers and heavy boots at one of these 



78 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

balls. But His Imperial Majesty constantly vio- 
lated not only etiquette, but good breeding as well. 
He was above the rules.* 

Every one is supposed to be in tbe room before 
the entrance of royalty, and at about ten o'clock 
" God Save the Queen " is struck up, and the Prin- 
cess of Wales with her ladies heads the procession. 
Afterward come the Prince of Wales, his brothers, 
and their attendants; for in all court ceremonies 
the women of equal rank precede the men. I was 
once at a dinner given to an Emperor and Empress, 



* Before Dom Pedro's arrival in England, the Brazilian 
minister had issued cards for a ball in his master's honor, 
to which all the great people in London were asked ; but 
when the Emperor came to town he declared that the min- 
ister had no right to make arrangements for him without 
his knowledge, and refused to go to the ball. So the ser- 
vant was disgraced before the world, though he had shown 
himself a finer gentleman than the sovereign whom he had 
sought to please. 

Another instance of the imperial discourtesy will be more 
interesting to Americans. General Grant arrived in London 
a week earlier than the Emperor. He had welcomed Dora 
Pedro to America the year before as President, and paid him 
every attention due from one Head of a State to another. 
He now sent to inquire when it would suit the Emperor to 
receive a visit. His Majesty was not in, and the message 
was delivered to a Chamberlain. But the Emperor never 
made any reply to the offered courtesy, and the visit was not 
paid. 



AMERICANS AT COURT. 79 

where the Prince of Wales entered first, preceding 
even the Emperor, because he walked with the 
Empress. 

After a few moments the first quadrille is formed, 
in which no one joins but royalty, or those whom 
royalty invites ; afterward dancing becomes general, 
but the upper part of the room is appropriated to the 
court and persons of very high rank. If a princess 
wishes to dance with a nobleman or gentleman, she 
sends him word by an equerry, for no one not royal 
can ask her. So also, when a prince desires a part- 
ner of lower degree, his lord-in- waiting signifies the 
princely pleasure, though the royal brothers some- 
times overlook this form and invite in person the 
lady with whom they deign to dance. Needless to 
say, they are never refused. 

The ball-room is oblong in shape, and showily, 
rather than splendidly decorated, according to the 
taste of the Prince Consort, which was always 
heavy and gaudy in art. At the top of the room, 
and running nearly across it, is a dais, with chairs 
of state for the royal personages ; and on each side 
of this, but at right angles, are several tiers of seats, 
those on one side reserved for the diplomatic corps, 
on the other for peeresses ; the bench next the floor 
for duchesses, the next for marchionesses, and so 
on ; and it is amusing to observe how scrupulous 
these noblewomen are to take exactly the place to 
which they consider themselves entitled. The 



80 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

court has never recognized the right of the duch- 
esses to the seats they claim ; but every duchess 
insists upon her bench, and royalty winks at the 
usurpation. 

After the first quadrille it used to be the custom 
when I first went to court (it is different now) for 
the greatest personages to pass in line before the 
Princes, who, to receive this homage, ranged them- 
selves standing along the dais. The diplomatic 
corps went first, the ladies leading the way ; then 
the men of the corps, according to their rank and 
the seniority of their standing at the English court. 
Afterward the duchesses advanced. The dais was 
so high that as they made their courtesies the heads 
of the ladies were brought about to the knees of the 
Princes. Some of these peeresses were of lineage 
as ancient as that of the royal family, and descended 
from as many kings ; others were the wives and 
daughters of men whose estates are larger than 
German principalities, and whose incomes transcend 
those of all the children of the Queen ; while for 
public service and character, their names will live 
when the world has forgotten whether Victoria was 
ever married. But the prostration went on, and 
those who performed it seemed as satisfied as those 
who received. 

At midnight supper is served, and, of course, roy- 
alty precedes. The doors of the supper-room are 
at the sides of the dais, and the great folk who usu- 



AMERICANS AT COURT. 81 

ally surround royalty are already near these doors. 
And now comes one of the most extraordinary ot 
all the scenes in court life. Only the most distin- 
guished in rank are supposed to follow the Princes to 
the supper-room. The doors are very soon closed, 
and the struggle among duchesses and ambassadors 
and people of that sort to get within these portals 
in time is something more ridiculous and unrefined 
than is ordinarily supposed to occur in palaces. You 
can see nothing worse in any parvenu house in the 
Fifth avenue. 

Once in, the aristocracy smooths its ruffled plu- 
mage, and places itself in two parallel lines, to watch 
the royal hosts at their repast, for no guest can be 
served till the Princes are appeased. There are 
three tables lining three sides of the room, and the 
royal family advance to the centre one, where they 
stand with their backs to the company, looking for 
all the world like ordinary people at an ordinary 
table at an ordinary ball. After the hosts have 
satisfied themselves they turn to their guests, and 
pass leisurely down the room toward the entrance, 
while the magnates of England in rank and political 
power and territorial importance press gently for- 
ward, if haply they may catch a royal glance and 
perform the profound genuflection again. 

Sometimes a scion of royalty feels a desire to stop 
and exchange a word with an individual of sufficient 
consequence, and then the favored one beuds defer- 
• 6 



82 AEISTOCRACY IN ENGLAOT). 

entiallj forward, the object of envy all along the 
line. When the Prince or Princess thinks the col- 
loquy has been sufficiently prolonged a little signal 
makes the participant aware that this high honor 
and happiness is over ; another profound obeisance, 
and the man or woman whom royalty has recog- 
nized sinks back into the crowd, beaming with 
reflected radiance. 

At other times the Princes walk steadily by, con- 
versing with each other, and ignoring every high- 
bred eifort to attract their notice, and then the lines 
of courtiers on both sides all bow together very low, 
like the chorus in the opera bouffe of "Barbe 
Bleue," and pretend not to be disappointed ; but 
when the children of the Queen have passed along 
their lieges fall to discussing their faults as vigor- 
ously as if the hosts were mortal, like themselves. 
In all tliese abasements I never noticed that the 
ultra-E-adicals who go to court were any less supple 
than the most ardent Tories, while the last manu- 
facturer who had entered the Government craned 
his neck for recognition as eagerly as the American 
Minister or the oldest groom of the stole. 



VIII. 
THE CROWN IN POLITICS. 

If all the parade of obeisance that surrounds the 
Queen indicated the real power of a mighty sover- 
eign, even democrats might appreciate the pag- 
eantry. If Victoria were an Elizabeth and could 
send her nobles to the Tower, if she possessed the 
authority of Kaiser or Czar, or one tithe of the in- 
fluence in public affairs of an American President, 
the shows of supremacy would have significance. 
Prerogative may be arrogant without pretension, 
and autocracy is not ridiculous, however imperious. 
But the abject statesmen, who sat at the feet ot 
their mistress at St. Paul's were Mayors of the Pal- 
ace after all. It is the change of a ministry, not 
the death of a sovereign, that convulses England. 

I was talking once with a Prime Minister, who 
declared that the great fault in American institu- 
tions is the quadrennial change of Presidents and 
the political turbulence that attends it. " Nothing 
like this," he said, " occurs when an English sover- 
eign dies." I could not refrain from answering 
that the parallel did not hold. The real crisis in 



84 ARISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

England is when a government goes out of power, 
not when a monarch leaves the scene. The states- 
man was silent. He could not deny that his own 
downfall would be a greater event than the demise 
of his mistress and the transfer of the regalia to an- 
other wearer. These are but the trappings and the 
suits of power. 

Lord Beaconsfield could make the Queen into an 
Empress, and the Government of the day settles the 
allowance of every royal prince when he arrives at 
his majority, as well as the dowry of every princess 
at her marriage. It even determines the income of 
the sovereign upon an accession to the throne. The 
Queen cannot create a peer against the will of the 
Prime Minister. If he makes out a list of his ad- 
herents to be elevated to the Upper House, Her 
Majesty is sometimes permitted to add the name of 
a personal friend, but not too often. She can refuse 
her sanction to no measure which the Government 
approves. Her speeches from the throne are all 
written for her. She must even accept distasteful 
ministers if the House of Commons or the nation 
will have no others. 

The Queen, nevertheless, declines to consider her- 
self a mere mouthpiece for .her ministers. A few 
years ago I was staying at the house of a member 
of the government who had just returned from 
Balmoral — for a minister is always in attendance 
on the Queen to lay public business before her and 



THE CROWN IN POLITICS. 85 

procure her signature to public documents. My host 
assured me that Her Majesty took the liveliest in- 
terest in national affairs, that she studied closely all 
matters of importance, had opinions of her own and 
expressed them freely, and sometimes induced her 
ministers to change their minds. Her long experi- 
ence and acquaintance with political men give her 
some advantages that none of her subjects can enjoy. 
She has never been out of office, and she knows the 
secrets of both the great parties in the State. 

Until quite recently, however, the ordinary Eng- 
lishman supposed his sovereign to be excluded from 
all participation in politics, a mere puppet, whose 
strings the minister pulled. But when the Memoirs 
of Baron Stockmar, the tutor of the Prince Consort, 
appeared, they divulged the fact familiar to the in- 
itiated, that both the Queen and the Prince had 
always entertained decided opinions on political 
subjects, and more than once had attempted to 
aifect, and even to change, the foreign policy of 
England. Diplomacy, indeed, is the sphere in which 
the Queen especially aspires to exert an influence. 
Her foreign connections by blood and marriage un- 
doubtedly contribute to mould her opinions: and 
she dislikes, besides, to appear to foreign sovereigns 
to possess less weight in the affairs of her own 
kingdom than they enjoy in theirs. So she keeps 
up a correspondence on state matters with kings 
and emperors which she fancies is of importance, 



86 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

and which may, indeed, sometimes have had its 
influence; though doubtless the Bismarcks and 
Gortchakoffs have been careful to discount the 
feminine diplomacy at its actual value. 

The discovery of this royal intervention created 
not only widespread surprise, but unfavorable, and 
even hostile, comment among her subjects; for 
there are not a few in England, and their number 
increases every year, who hold the functions of a 
constitutional sovereign to consist in simply sign- 
ing, with closed eyes and lips, whatever document 
a minister may present. They submit to monarchy 
only on condition that its claws shall be closely 
pared. But now the Queen stood revealed as some- 
thing more than a figurehead ; the machine was an 
automaton, but with a concealed workman ; for her 
judgment, it was seen, had been not merely guided, 
but controlled, by her foreign husband, while the 
Prince himself had relied in a great measure on the 
advice of his German mentor. Baron Stockmar, an 
individual of whose very existence nine-tenths of 
tlie British nation had been unaware. 

These disclosures were at first distasteful to the 
court, which, at least in the Prince Consort's time, 
had been content with a share of power without the 
show ; but when once the real state of affairs was 
unveiled a bold face was put on the matter. In the 
"Life of the Prince Consort," written not only 
with the sanction, but with the avowed assistance of 



THE CROWN IN POLITICS. 87 

the Queen, the doctrine was defended that the sov- 
ereign of right should have opinions, and maintain 
them, too, on all subjects of national importance. 
One volume of this work appeared at the height 
of the controversy in regard to the Turco-Russian 
war; and the leaning of the court in that con- 
troversy was purposely and unmistakably made 
apparent. 

The result was proof that no serious intervention 
of the Crown will ever be tolerated in English 
politics again. The interposition in this instance 
was very generally regarded as injudicious, and by 
many was resented as an unwarrantable encroach- 
ment ; while the dislike which in various quarters 
had been felt for the character and policy of Lord 
Beaconsfield was in some degree extended to the 
Queen. At no time during my long residence in 
England was there so much of downright animosity 
displayed toward the court. Politicians wantonly 
fanned the flame for selfish or party purposes, and 
courtiers foolishly followed their example, dragging 
Majesty itself into the strife. Lord Beaconsfield, 
one of the ablest and most unscrupulous adven- 
turers who ever rose to power, was directly answer- 
able for this opposition toward the Queen. He de- 
liberately used his influence with a weak old woman, 
beguiling her by flattery and a show of deference 
for her opinions, to assume an authority that he 
knew the nation would resent ; an authority which 



88 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

he was liimself to exercise, while the opinions were 
those that he had himself infused. 

With a few in England — the courtiers and those 
who aspire to be courtiers — the sentiments of the 
sovereign still have weight. Here and there a 
genuine Tory survives who believes in the divine 
right of kings, because that implies the divine right 
of dukes and earls and landed gentry and superiors 
generally. The nobility, as a class, perceive that 
their cause is bound up with that of the throne ; 
that if one is overturned, the other must roll in the 
dust ; if one is maintained, the other is likelier to 
remain secure. Like the priests of a false religion, 
they fall down before the image they have them- 
selves set up, and, in the eyes of the multitude, are 
its profoundest worshippers. It is with this feeling 
that they behave toward the Queen as if she were 
the Grand Lama of Thibet, and keep up the mum- 
meries that have been discarded by the Mikado of 
Japan. Perhaps at times the homage is in part sin- 
cere. People often persuade themselves of what 
they wish to believe, and by dint of repeating a 
form one may come to accept a creed. 

There are others who see through the sham, but 
go through the show all the same; the courtiers 
who are so close as to perceive the nakedness of 
royalty under its robes, or the aspirants and ad- 
venturers who are aware that this is the way to 
make themselves acceptable to their social superiors. 



THE CROWN IN POLITICS. 89 

Lord Beaconsiield was chief among these, and knew 
how to use the others ; to form a party out of them, 
and to crowd himself to the head of the party. He 
was so much cleverer than any one else in England, 
that he, the most un-English of English statesmen, 
of a hated race and hostile creed, without either the 
nobler qualities or the adventitious aids that Eng- 
lishmen seem equally to reverence, without family 
or fortune, or political honesty or consistency, was 
able to make himself the leader of the aristocracy 
of England ; to represent and to control both the 
Tories and the Crown. Knowing full well that the 
course to which he advised the Queen was sure to 
prove in the end injurious to the Crown, that to 
thrust Majesty at the people at this day was to en- 
danger its existence, he yet believed that the danger 
would not come nor the storm burst in his time. 
He could and would retain power and place by pan- 
dering to the vanity of the Queen and playing on 
the loyalty of her subjects, and on the veneration 
of the English people for whatever is established. 

For a while the scheme worked well. The in- 
fluence of the Crown helped him to gain voters in 
Parliament, though he lost them out of it ; and he 
had the sagacity, besides, to appeal to the imperial 
instinct in Englishmen as well as to the national 
pride, combining these in his own designs, and 
making them the tools to contribute to his suprem- 
acy. He carried his measures for a day. 



90 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

The Queen had no longer the cahn judgment 
and the strong good sense of the Prince Consort to 
lean upon, and, woman-like, allowed her partialities 
and prejudices to be seen. This, it is true, could 
at first be done onlj in petty matters — invitations 
withheld from one rival, or visits paid to another ; 
but such indications are significant at a court, and 
they were not wanting. Mr. Gladstone was left 
out from state banquets at Windsor, and the Queen 
lunched with Lord Beacon^eld at his country 
house — an honor she had paid no minister for years. 
These very demonstrations of the royal preference, 
however, contributed to the downfall of the Bea- 
consfield government ; for they were felt to indicate 
a political bias in Her Majesty, and the idea became 
prevalent that the court was interfering in politics 
beyond any recent precedent. The indignation 
which this belief aroused was in many quarters 
profound. For a time it seemed as if the monarch- 
ical principle had received a blow ; no one thought 
a fatal one, but when a structure stands in any way 
insecure, when similar ones are tottering or falling 
on every side, when there are foes within as well as 
without the walls, the garrison should beware of 
inviting attack or exposing the vulnerable points, 
which may thus far have been screened. Imme- 
diately after the appearance of the royal book, 
which was in reality a manifesto. Lord Beaconsfield 
was hurled from power, and there can be no doubt 



THE CROWN IN POLITICS. 91 

that the avowed favor of the Crown contributed 
directly to this result. The people w^ere determined 
that the Queen should reign, but not rule. The 
engineer was hoist with his own petard. 

The rojal feeling at this juncture rose so high 
that, when the Tories were overthrown, and the 
time came, according to English usage, for the sov- 
ereign to send for the chief of the Opposition to 
form a government, Her Majesty offered the pre- 
miership to two members of the Liberal party before 
she consented to call Mr. Gladstone to her counsels. 
But Lord Granville and Lord Hartington were 
loyal to their chief, and informed the Queen that 
only Mr. Gladstone would be accepted by the na- 
tion ; and Her Majesty was obliged to yield, though 
not, it is said, without tears. So the man she dis- 
liked was summoned ; he kissed her hand, and be- 
came her chief counsellor, the head of her govern- 
ment and the director of all her public acts. The 
bubble that Lord Beaconsfield had blown so high 
had burst forever. 

The Queen, however, is not without sagacity, and 
certainly has no wish to imperil her throne. She 
can discern the line which she must never trans- 
gress. She means, besides, to be constitutional, 
though, if she be so, no English sovereign ever was 
before ; no other was compelled to submit his own 
will so absolutely and constantly to that of the 
nation. But the English Constitution grows and 



92 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

changes continuously, like the character of a living 
man ; and the idea of the subjection of the sover- 
eign has developed marvellously of late. Her Maj- 
esty is well aware of the tacit conditions on which 
she keeps her throne, and invariably accepts the 
situation when it becomes inevitable. So she wiped 
her eyes. Beaconsfield, the tempter, had led her 
astray, put naughty notions into her head, and she, 
not unnaturally, regretted the minister who had 
flattered her vanity and humored her pride ; who 
added to her titles and pretended to add to her 
power; but when he was gone, she subsided into 
the good Queen of present England again — sent 
telegrams of condolence to sick or dying friends, 
distributed India shawls among the aristocracy, 
wrote a book about John Brown instead of the 
Prince Consort, and for a while let politics alone. 
She and Mr. Gladstone appeared to rub along very 
amicably together. The new Prime Minister was 
asked to the next royal wedding, though when he 
stayed at Windsor it was said that his sleep was dis- 
turbed by the screaming of Beaconsfield's peacocks, 
which the Queen had brought from her former 
Premier's funeral. 

The English are good-natured, on the whole, and 
they like dignities and establishments — " something 
to kotow to ; " and "Whigs, and even Radicals, con- 
tent with the possession of place and power, quickly 
forgot their recent rage. No more diatribes or 



THE CEOWN IN POLITICS. 93 

pamphlets appeared, transcending etiquette and 
censuring majesty, and the Queen seemed to re- 
cover her pristine popularity. It was a family 
quarrel, after all, and apparently entirely healed ; 
but it would be wiser and better for all concerned 
not to provoke it again. 



IX. 
THE PERSONAL CHARACTER OF THE QUEEN. 

The portrait of the Queen would be incomplete 
without some recognition of the fact that the per- 
sonal virtues of Her Majesty have contributed to the 
stability of the English throne. In this era of revo- 
lutions, when Europe is crowded with exiled sover- 
eigns, when Sultans and Czars, and even Presidents, 
are assassinated, when France and Spain and Rome 
and Naples and a host of pettier States have not 
only overthrown their monarchs, but changed the 
very forms of their governments, the British dy- 
nasty has remained undisturbed. Doubtless, this is 
due in a great measure to the freedom of British 
institutions as well as to the preference of the 
British people for whatever is established; but 
the invariable private excellencies of the Queen 
have also been conspicuous agents in producing the 
result. 

'No breath of scandal has ever lighted on Yictoria's 
fame as wife or widow, and the purity of the 
atmosphere which she had to create for her court is 
known to the world. Neither is her beautiful 



THE PERSONAL CHARACTER OF THE QUEEN. 95 

domestic life, preserved amid ceremonies and dis- 
tractions innumerable and unavoidable, a mere 
matter of course. The spectacle of other sovereigns 
of her own age and sex and time demonstrates this. 
Divided families, rebellious or rival relatives, dis- 
obedient children, unfaithful consorts of royal rank 
abound to-day, as in all history. But Her Majesty, 
with an absolute confidence in the aifection of her 
subjects, and an instinctive sympathy with the 
domestic feeling of the British people, has revealed 
much of her character and daily life in the " Leaves 
from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands," 
and the "Life of the Prince Consort," to which she 
so largely contributed. Apart from the political 
character unwisely given to portions of the latter 
work, there is little in any of these volumes that does 
not elevate one's idea of the lady who has been able 
to retain so much simplicity and genuine feeling, 
amid the pageantries of a palace and the punctilio 
of a court. 

There is doubtless a little of what, to an American 
and a democrat, seems over-consciousness of rank, a 
certainty that the most trivial matters concerning 
herself and her family must be interesting ; and the 
over-weening regard for etiquette, which is one of 
Her Majesty's most distinctive traits, is often so 
apparent as to become amusing. She notes how 
people sit at dinner or the order in which they enter 
a room as carefully as if these were questions of 



\)b ARISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

peace or war, and records tlie long lists of her 
guests at weddings or funerals — the only occasions 
at which she now entertains in state — as gravely as 
if she were proclaiming treaties or dividing empires. 
But these peculiarities are perhaps inseparable from 
her position, and originate in the life she must lead 
rather than in her individual character or prefer- 
ences. 

On the other hand, tlie Queen of England ex- 
hibits in her exalted sphere virtues which the hum- 
blest man or woman in her realm might imitate, 
virtues which endear her personally to her subjects 
and certainly make them unwilling in her time to 
disturb her throne. Purity, honor, truth, religion, 
fidelity in all the family relations, constancy to 
friends, sympathy with all forms of human suffer- 
ing in whatever class — these are traits on account 
of which the English people of to-day is content to 
have a Queen. 

There may be times when the traits of the woman 
seem incongruous with the character of a ruler; 
when the unconscious disposition to submit to 
another mind, the susceptibility to the influence of 
a masculine nature, makes the Salique law compre- 
hensible, if not regrettable. Not every favorite or 
director of the Queen has been a Prince Consort. 
Beaconsfield and John Brown each exercised a sway 
that was neither admirable nor beneficial. But there 
is the other side of the picture, too, and the very 



THE PERSONAL CHAEACTER OF THE QUEEN. 97 

womanliness of the Queen has in many ways com- 
mended her to her own subjects, while it extorts a 
sympathetic interest from the world at large. That 
womanliness makes the country to her no abstrac- 
tion, but a personality. She feels toward her people 
as a mother toward her children. There may be to 
a republican something odd or almost ludicrous in 
the idea, but there is something touching, and even 
elevated, besides. The Queen, it is plain, has a 
downright affection for her people, as for an individ- 
ual, and, to a certain degree, the affection is re- 
turned. 

It may be fortunate for the dynasty after all that 
the sovereign of England in these days is a woman. 
A very important man once said to me : " This 
people would not stand another George lY. ; " and 
I have heard court ladies declare they would never 
kiss the hand of the Prince of Wales. The homage 
paid the Queen has something in it of the courtesy 
offered to a lady, and no man is humiliated by 
kneeling to a woman. We all do that, democrats or 
not, at some time in our lives. 

Even the petty revelations in Her Majesty's latest 
volume, the very babble about the servants and the 
family, make a picture of home life and of a gar- 
rulous old lady under her crown, that has a certain 
attraction for the English nature. Her love of 
country life, her visits to the sick, her gossip with 
the gillies, her presence at servants' balls — though 
7 



98 ARI8T0CEACY IN ENGLAND. 

she never attends an entertainment of the aristoc- 
racy — all betray the homespun tastes and virtues of 
a " gude wife," for all the ermine. 

In fact, Her Majesty's sympathies are with the 
middle class rather than with the aristocracy. She 
looks like one of them, and, so far as she can, she 
lives like one of them. I saw her once in public 
refuse to be cloaked by a duke and turn her 
shoulders to John Brown. Doubtless Brown per- 
formed the service more skilfully, but there was a 
significance in the act all the same. Her very regard 
for etiquette, in a lower rank would be the interest 
of a shop-woman in her wares. I asked General 
Grant how he was impressed by Her Majesty when 
he dined at Windsor. He said that when talking 
with him the Queen had a fidgetty, embarrassed 
manner, like that of a person unused to her posi- 
tion, but anxious to put him at his ease. She 
probably wished to show him that she was his 
superior, and yet to do it in a high-bred way ; for 
in his case she may have had a suspicion that the 
superiority was not recognized. The sensation must 
have been unusual. 

The people like such stories about her as this. 
Once upon a time there was a domestic quarrel 
between the royal pair, and the Prince Consort 
locked himself in his bedchamber. But soon Her 
Majesty repented and knocked at the Prince's door. 
" Who is there ? " he asked. *' The Queen," was 



THE PERSONAL CHARACTER OF THE QUEEN. 99 

tlie reply, and no answer came. After a while 
there was another knock, and again the Prince Con- 
sort asked, ''Who is there?" '^Yictoria, Albert," 
and the door was opened and the quarrel past. 

The counterpart to this is the plaintive utterance 
of Her Majesty on the death of the Prince : " There 
is no one left to call me Victoria now." 

The Qneen is, indeed, debarred from ordinary 
intimacies, and therefore takes her subjects into her 
confidence. There is the necessity to unbend to some 
one, and as no one is near enough or grand enough, 
she unbends to them all, just as she courtesies to a 
multitude, but never to an individual. Her subjects 
respect the confidence. Her weaknesses she may 
betray, but it is to friends. Her eccentricities have 
been laid bare, but they shall be covered. 

The Queen is the granddaughter of George III. 
in more things than one. She has a touch of his 
oddity as well as of his obstinacy ; she inherits his 
royal pride and his royal narrowness, but also his 
idea of duty, his love of country, his fidehty to his 
family and friends. 

I may, perhaps, be permitted to mention the 
names of two of those friends, not now living, whom 
many Americans had good reason to esteem, and 
some to regard with even a kinder feeling. The 
late Dean of "Westminster and his wife, the Lady 
Augusta Stanley, were both persons of more than 
ordinary character and admirable qualities, and, 



100 AEI8T0CRACT IN ENGLAND. 

while gemiinely loyal and attached to British insti- 
tutions, in no way narrow or prejudiced in their 
partialities. Both were members of the court for 
years, and devoted to their royal mistress, and from 
them I learned many circumstances and traits that 
made me better appreciate the private character of 
the Queen. She returned their regard with gener- 
ous ardor, and has shown that she cherishes their 
memory still. There must be a charm about her in- 
timate behavior when it attaches natures like theirs. 
"When the Dean paid his addresses to Lady 
Augusta Bruce, she was in waiting on Her Majesty, 
and, immediately after he was accepted, the Queen 
invited him to dinner. At table she remarked, 
with a touch of affection in the humor, that she had 
always thought the Dean of "Westminster too faithful 
a subject to suspect him of enticing away a favorite 
servant of the Crown. But Lady Augusta retained 
her connection with the court even after her mar- 
riage; she was extra-woman of the bedchamber, as 
it is called, and was often summoned by her royal 
mistress for companionship as well as attendance. 
The Dean was sent to St. Petersburg to perform the 
English service at the marriage of the Duke of 
Edinburgh, and his wife accompanied him. In the 
rigors of a Russian winter the seeds were sown of 
the lingering and torturing malady that carried her 
off. "While she lay suffering at the Deanery at 
"Westminster, the Queen and the Princesses paid 



THE PERSONAL CHARACTER OF THE QUEEN. 101 

her frequent visits, prayed with her, read with her, 
wept over her ; and in Westminster Abbey there is 
placed a memorial stone with an inscription indicat- 
ing that the lady who sleeps beneath was the friend 
of her sovereign. 

There is, however, one phase of the fidelity so 
strongly marked in Her Majesty's character which 
some of her subjects do not find so admirable. The 
higher English, as a rule, do not mourn long or bit- 
terly for their dead ; they return promptly to the 
world of business or of pleasure, and seem easily 
comforted for the loss of their nearest relatives. 
They therefore naturally disapprove the Queen's 
prolonged withdrawal from public life and court en- 
tertainments. They miss the pomp which should 
surround the head of the State on great occasions, 
as well as the satisfaction of being seen in public 
with her ; while as politicians they deem her se- 
clusion unwise, as perhaps it is. The sentiment of 
loyalty in our day requires every opportunity of ex- 
pression or development. It is a plant that does 
not thrive so well in the shade, and the populace 
must see Majesty continually in the flesh if it is ex- 
pected continually to revere. The London trades- 
men also murmur at the decreased expenditure of an 
absent court, which they do not hesitate to attribute 
to parsimony. 

It may, indeed, be true that the Queen should 
sacrifice her private feeling for a public duty ; that 



102 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

she should relax her saddened features and put 
aside her sombre garb ; yet who that has read the 
most touching portions of her recent volumes but 
will feel for the wife, so many years a widow, and 
still constant to the memory of her husband ? Who 
can fail to appreciate the fidelity to the past which 
can find no pleasure in the present, the grief which 
in any rank is so rare ? To the common people at 
least this steadfastness of sorrow is pathetic, and 
certainly in history the figure of this mourning 
Queen will be as interesting as that of any of the 
frivolous and beautiful sovereigns whose misfortunes 
have moved the world. I^ot Marie Antoinette, nor 
Josephine, nor the unhappy wandering Eugenie of 
our own day, appeals for a more tender sympathy 
than Victoria, seated alone for so many years on so 
lofty and sad an eminence, not frantic nor rebellious 
in her sorrow, but faithful, secluded, expectant. 

In the gallery of the Queen's private apartments 
at Windsor there stands a piece of statuary, of life size 
and nobly conceived, representing the Prince Con- 
sort drawn by angels heavenward from the arms of 
the weeping Queen ; beneath is inscribed the line : 

" Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way." 

To come upon this group amid the splendors of a 
palace is to feel how completely it expresses the 
emotion of one who mourns before the nations and 
is lonely upon a throne. 



X. 

PRECEDENCE IN THE SERVANTS' HALL. 

The question of precedence agitates bosoms 
lower than those of the lords. The rivalries rage 
in the servants' hall on this account as fiercely as at 
court. In great houses the servants go in to dinner 
according to rank, and when the master is enter- 
taining company for a week the butler has a diffi- 
cult task to arrange the visiting menials in the or- 
der of their degrees. First of all is the grand dis- 
tinction between upper and lower servants — about 
equivalent to that between lords and commoners, if, 
indeed, the line is not still more strictly drawn, for 
lords do dine with commoners, while upper and 
lower servants may not eat together except during 
part of the dinner. The butler, the housekeeper, 
the groom of the chambers, the valets, and the 
ladies' maids — these constitute the upper classes, 
and take their meals in the housekeeper's room ; 
the others eat in the servants' hall. At dinner, 
however, they all sit together, the butler presiding, 
until the meats have been served ; but before the 
sweets come on, the butler rises, proposes the health 



104 AKISTOORACY IN ENGLAND. 

of '' my lord and lady," all standing ; and then the 
upper servants march solemnly off, according to de- 
gree, to the housekeeper's room. They never take 
their sweets in the servants' hall. Up to this point 
extreme decorum has been observed, but when the 
restraint of the imposing presence has been with- 
drawn greater hilarity prevails below the salt. The 
footmen begin to flirt with the housemaids, and the 
grooms and helpers betray that they come from the 
stables or the yard. 

In a great house thirty or forty servants is no un- 
usual number, and when there is a house party as 
many as a hundred are often assembled, for each 
guest brings his own servant, and the various valets 
and maids, the extra coachmen and grooms, make 
up a company that rivals the array in the drawing- 
room for pretension and pride. For all these — 
especially the upper servants — must be placed ac- 
cording to the rank of their masters. The servant 
of a duke, of course, precedes the servant of an 
earl, and the valet of an ambassador naturally goes 
before the gentleman of a mere envoy. They are 
usually called by the names of their masters, so as 
to settle at once this point of precedence. 

I was once staying at a little inn near Tintern 
Abbey that I used to frequent, when a coach and 
four drove up with a party of people who stopped 
for beer. It was a stately establishment, with liv- 
eries and horses all very smart, and I could hear the 



PRECEDENCE IN THE SERVANTS' HALL. 105 

occupants address each other as " Lady Kitty " and 
" Sir George," and even "Your Grace" and "Your 
Excellency." I was new in England then, and 
looked out of my window to survey the aristocrats. 
They struck me as rather gay in their dress and not 
so subdued in manner as those I had met in society, 
and when the coach drove off I asked the landlord 
who they were. " Oh," he replied, " they are the 
servants at the Duke of Beaufort's, who lives near 
here. He has lent them one of his coaches for a 
holiday." 

1 asked my own valet about this fashion of names, 
and he assured me it was common for servants to 
call each other in this way. Not long afterward I 
was visiting at a country-house, where one after- 
noon the gentlemen went for a walk. I wanted my 
hat or my cane, and asked the groom of the cham- 
bers to call my man. As he went off I stood wait- 
ing at the door and heard him calling my own name 
through the corridor to summon my man. 

I learned a lesson about my own degree at Pow- 
derham Castle, the seat of the Earl of Devon. I 
was a Secretary of Legation at the time, and was vis- 
iting the house with Mr. Motley, then the American 
Minister, and my man came to me in great dudgeon 
one day to complain. Mr. Motley's valet, he said, 
had introduced him in the servants' hall as '' our 
Secretary's servant." 

This man of mine took his own dress-coat when we 



106 AJBISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

went visiting, as regularly as he took mine. All the 
upper men-servants, he said, were expected to wear 
dress-coats to dinner, and in some houses the ladies' 
maids wore low-bodied gowns and gloves. I did 
not believe him, and asked a friend of mine, the 
daughter of a marquis, and herself the head of a 
great establishment. She told me she did not ap- 
prove the custom, and would not countenance it 
with her own servants ; but that there were ducal 
houses in which an allowance was made to the 
ladies' maids and the housekeepers for gloves to 
wear to dinner. 

This recalls a story about the Queen. Her Maj- 
esty once observed that one of her maids of honor 
wore soiled gloves, and was told that the lady was 
poor and could not afford fresh gloves every time 
she went on duty — at least on four hundred pounds 
a year. Thereupon the Queen added to the lady's 
stipend, with the express understanding that the 
gloves were to be renewed for every occasion of cere- 
mony. Thus superiors regard the incomes of their 
attendants as well as their own state, all the way up 
and down the scale. 

For the Queen doubtless looks upon her servants 
as a duchess does upon hers; unless, indeed, the 
distance between the Queen and a duchess is greater 
than that between the duchess and her maid. At 
the time of the engagement of the Princess Louise 
a story was current which shows what the high 



PKECEDENCE IN THE SERVANTS' HALL. 107 

English believe to be the feeling of the Queen. In 
the rojal establishment there is a separate table for 
the household, at which even the minister in attend- 
ance eats when he is not invited to the Queen's. 
According to gossip, Lord Lome went to lunch with 
his future wife, and was asked to the table of Her 
Majesty. His mother, the Duchess of Argyll, was 
mistress of the robes, and when he entered the 
Queen's dining-room. Lord Lome asked : '^ Where is 
the Duchess ? " " Oh ! she is lunching with the 
household." 

But to return to the servants' hall. When I went 
to Dunrobin with General Grant, it was convenient 
for me to take a footman, and General Grant had a 
courier. Now, a footman in livery is not an upper 
servant, but, unmindful of this important regula- 
tion, I had put my man into plain clothes. In con- 
sequence, he was supposed to be a valet, and was 
admitted to the august society of the housekeeper's 
room. All went well in the borrowed state till he 
quarrelled with the courier, who then revealed that 
James was a mere liveried servant, and the poor 
fellow was relegated to the hall. It was worse than 
being degraded from the diplomatic coi-ps to the 
general circle at court. 

I was staying once at a house where there had 
been a grand quarrel between the maids of Lady 
Torrington and Lady Molesworth. Lord Torring- 
ton was a viscount and Lady Molesworth only the 



108 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

widow of a baronet. But tlie Torringtons were 
poor and Lady Molesworth was very rich ; it was 
said that Lord Torrington managed her estates for 
her. Upon this her Abigail presumed, vainly sup- 
posing with the pride of wealth that her mistress 
was superior in consequence to those who belonged 
to the peerage. She was absolutely about to take 
precedence as they went in to dinner. But Lady 
Torrington's maid haughtily thrust her back, and 
exclaimed : " You are only the servant of a baro- 
net's widow, and my mistress is the wife of the 
Eight Honorable Yiscount Torrington, Lord in 
Waiting to Her Majesty." Of course the superior 
claim was allowed, and Lady Molesworth' s maid re- 
mained behind in merited confusion. The story 
reached the upper regions, where it created a deal of 
laughter, but no one seemed to suppose it reflected 
any ridicule on real rank. The distinctions in the 
drawing-room are important ; only those in the ser- 
vants' hall are trivial. 

Lord Derby was a visitor at this same house, a 
castle in the Highlands, and when he was about to 
leave, his valet was toasted at dinner. The states- 
man is quiet and reserved in the last degree, dislikes 
parade, and avoids speeches whenever it is possible. 
So when the Earl of Derby's name was "men- 
tioned " in the hall, his man arose, put both hands 
on the table after the fashion of the Earl, bowed 
first to the right and then to the left, and sat down 



PKECEDENCE IN THE SERVANTS' HALL. 109 

witliout saying a word. The fellow had borrowed 
his master's manner as well as his name. How the 
report of this incident reached the host I cannot say, 
but he told it to me. 

I once went to a wedding breakfast in the ser- 
vants' hall. It was at a house in Wales. The bride 
had been the nursery maid of one of the children, 
and the bridegroom was a young farmer on the 
estate ; for in England domestic service is not con- 
sidered degrading. The farmers and small trades- 
men are on a level with the ordinary servants in a 
great house, and quite look up to the housekeeper 
and the butler. They all say " sir " and " ma'am " 
to these great personages just as the nobility do to 
the Princes and the Queen. 

Even persons of consideration in the middle class 
associate with the servants of the higher aristoc- 
racy. Some years ago I was visiting at a house 
near one of the most important towns in middle 
England, and went into the town to consult a 
doctor. He was an accomplished man, and I had 
an extremely interesting conversation witli him. 
When I left he said I needed further treatment, 
and asked me where he should call. I answered, 
"At Bretton Park." "What!" he exclaimed. 
"Are you stopping there? Why, I visit their 
butler." The awe with which he regarded a guest 
at Bretton was amusing. 

I had another acquaintance whom I highly 



110 ARISTOCRACY EST ENGLAND. 

esteemed, a very respectable Englishman, who be- 
longed to the middle class. I was once telling him 
of a visit I had paid to a Yorkshire nobleman, and 
he said he knew the butler well ; he often went to 
see him, and the butler always got out some very 
choice port, for my friend was a judge of wine. 
One day when he was praising the brand the butler 
exclaimed: "What would his lordship give for a 
bottle of this wine ? " I always wanted to tell this 
story to my host, but I thought it would be a breach 
of confidence toward the butler. 

But the wedding waits all this while. The 
family was Catholic, but they were Squires of the 
parish all the same, and had their pew in the parish 
church, though they never went to service. Mass 
was said for them in a private chapel in the house. 
This morning, however, the young ladies went to 
the marriage, and took me with them as a guest. 
The pew was in the chancel, within the altar rails, 
and we had a good view of the bride. The village 
girls strewed flowers in her way, and she was 
buxom and as blushing as if of higher degree. 
After the ceremony the young squire, a lad of 
seventeen, invited me to the breakfast. There was 
an Italian baron also on a visit at the house, and the 
occasion was as curious to him as to the American 
democrat ; so he accompanied us. 

The servants were about forty in number, and 
sat at a table shaped like an L, the upper servants, 



PRECEDENCE IN THE SERVANTS' HALL. Ill 

of course, at the upper end, and tlie others below 
the corner. When we entered thej all rose and re- 
mained standing while the young squire toasted the 
bride. The baron and I drank her health in some 
very good sherry which the servants were allowed 
for the occasion. The youngster spoke of the 
regret he felt in losing a faithful servant of his 
house ; at this the little boy, whose nurse she had 
been, and who sat next her at table, put his arm 
around the bride, and she whimpered, and so did the 
housemaids all down the line, and the bridegroom 
looked as if he thought this wasn't fair. But the 
heir, with great tact for one so young, and an 
Englishman, too, hastened to say that, since she 
was to leave them, it was pleasant to think she 
had become the wife of one of their own farmers, 
known to them for his honesty, and so forth, and 
so on. Then the bridegroom blushed, and every- 
body was satisfied. As we were leaving the room 
the procession of upper servants started off in state, 
but I saw my poor James, who had once been 
allowed to accompany them, remaining behind in 
his livery. 

Afterward we had our luncheon, and then there 
was a dance on the lawn ; and the ladies, the baron, 
and I were there to see. There was a blind harper, 
for it was Wales, and the dance was Sir Eoger de 
Coverley, which, for those who may need the infor- 
mation, I will say is the same with the Virginia 



112 AKISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

reel. The bridegroom led off with one of the 
daughters of the house, the young squire took out 
the bride, and the baron and I had our pick of the 
housemaids for partners; and mine was as rosy 
and pretty an English girl as ever I danced with at 
court. 



XL 

THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 

In all social matters the aristocracy retains its 
old supremacy, but in politics the sceptre has de- 
parted from Judah. Up to the time of the passage 
of the Reform bill in 1832 the political influence of 
the peers was paramount ; but since that epoch it 
has waned. The nobility, it is true, like the Queen, 
still wears the insignia of power, but the only use 
of the coronet now is to put it on the coffin. The 
House of Lords, it is true, is one of the estates of 
the realm ; its assent is nominally indispensable to 
the validity of every law ; but both Crown and peers 
are dragged at the chariot wheels of the Commons. 
The Lords make a good fight ; they die hard, but 
their political decadence is undoubted. The most 
august assemblage in Europe, as Britons like to call 
the House of Lords, is only a body to register the 
decrees of the Lower Chamber ; and if it dares dis- 
pute the will of the Prime Minister or the Commons, 
it is threatened with an invasion of new members, 
to which the irruptions of the barbarians into the 
Roman Senate or the Parisian mob into the various 
8 



114 AEISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

French assemblies were antecedents and parallels. 
These ancient and foreign assaults preceded revolu- 
tion, and the British aristocrats know the signs, 
and jield. 

Ever since the memorable battle between William 
lY. and his ministers, in 1832, and the determina- 
tion of Lord Grey to create peers in sufficient num- 
bers to carry the Reform bill, the House of Lords 
has recognized its subordinate position. After re- 
peated struggles, after rejecting the bill again and 
again, after dissolutions of Parliament and changes 
of the ministry, after general elections, which tri- 
umphantly supported the measure for extending 
representation, the Lords were still obstinate. The 
King was on their side, but the people were deter- 
mined, and, for the second time in English history, 
King and Lords found themselves weaker than the 
Commons. Charles I. was the principal personage 
in the contest of his day, and the nobility stood 
behind him ; two hundred years later it was the 
Lords who led the defence, while the King was in 
the background, although an ardent ally. At last 
the Prime Minister, himself an earl, advised the 
King to create a sufficient number of peers to turn 
the scale, but the King refused. Thereupon the 
Ministry resigned, and the Duke of Wellington 
undertook to form a new Government and stem the 
tide. But he also proved powerless. The former 
ministry returned, and William TV. made his sub- 



THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 115 

mission in these words : " The King grants permis- 
sion to Earl Grey and to his Chancellor, Lord 
Brougham, to create such a number of peers as will 
be sufficient to insure the passing of the Reform 
bill." Upon this, rather than be overwhelmed by 
the new creations, a majority of the Opposition ab- 
sented themselves from the House of Lords, and the 
bill was passed. It was known then that the aris- 
tocracy of England would never again be able seri- 
ously to withstand the will of the people. The 
knell of their political power had sounded. 

They retain, nevertheless, all their conservative 
instincts, and rally round a sinking cause with a 
devotion which one cannot but admire. Noblesse 
oblige^ and the latest additions, the grandsons of 
barbers and tailors, are as inflexible in their loyalty 
to their order as those descended from the Plantag- 
enets. Even Mr. Gladstone's creations desert him 
on the first opportunity ; the very colleagues of his 
cabinet, the Radicals of the Radicals, go over to the 
enemy when once they get within the precincts and 
the influence of the House of Lords. For the peers 
vote in solid phalanx ; perhaps too solidly or stolidly. 
They cannot see that sometimes to yield a little 
would be to save a little. Their instinct is to defend 
every outwork, to repel every assault. 

But it is only when their rank or their retroactive 
policy is in danger that they pay much attention to 
politics. Shorn of their ancient influence, they 



116 ARISTOCRACY m ENGLAND. 

probably dislike to be coiistantlj reminded of their 
insiguiticauce, and are apparently indifferent to the 
ordinary course of public atfaii's. Some of this in- 
difference, it is true, may proceed from senility. Of 
those who attend the House of Lords one-fifth have 
passed the age of threescore and ten, thirty-seven 
are upward of seventy five, and twenty-three are 
octogenarians. The average age of a peer is fifty- 
eight. Bouvier defines senility to be " a loss of 
energy in some of the intellectual operations, while 
the affections remain natural and unperverted." 
This exactly describes the condition of the ancient 
peers, if not of the entire venerable body, whose 
affections still cling to their former consequence, 
though their intellect and energy are insufficient to 
retain it. 

But incapacity as much as decrepitude is responsi- 
ble for the apathy of the Lords. The ability of the 
peerage is for the most part confined to the men 
who have forced their way into it. Out of twenty- 
eight dukes only one has shown marked political 
intelligence, and he would hardly have attracted 
attention had he been born in a lower degree. Of 
all the other nobles long descended Lord Derby and 
Lord Salisbury only are prominent, and these 
cognate statesmen themselves can hardly be called 
men of genius. Clever men, it is true, do not 
abound in any class of life, and Diogenes needed 
his lamp on the outside of the House of Lords ; but 



THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 117 

the peers are the aristoi^ the best ; the legislators 
for a nation. They have every advantage of educa- 
tion, association with the ablest, early and wide 
experience of affairs, the habit of authority, the 
confidence of their equals, the deference of the 
mass; yet the body is not even second rate in 
business capacity or political tact, to say nothing of 
intellectual acquirement or power. The peers enjoy 
but do not employ their splendid opportunities. 
The younger ones make no pretence of fitting 
themselves for their functions. I knew, indeed, one 
eldest son of an earl who went as a clerk in a gov- 
ernment office, to learn government business, but I 
never heard of another, and he soon grew tired of 
the drudgery and returned to his yacht and his 
drag. The cadets of great houses sometimes devote 
themselves to politics, but the heirs can dispense 
with the effort, for they will be peers all the same. 

Even the additions to the peerage seldom display 
ability after they enter the charmed portals. Sir 
Stafford J^orthcote and Mr. Lowe were both consid- 
ered shelved when they were turned into peers. 
Their promotion was their greatest defeat. The 
House of Lords was called the Hospital for Incur- 
ables in Horace Walpole's time. What would he 
have christened it to-day ? 

Besides all this, it is a notable fact that genius, 
though it may be ennobled, is rarely transmitted. 
It is the title, not the talent, that is hereditary. ]^o 



118 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

descendant of a Lord Chancellor has ever rivalled 
his ancestor, and of all the successors of those whose 
ability raised them to the House of Lords, only one 
is famous to-day. Instead of fostering or developing 
talent, rank seems to have a crushing or withering 
influence, and the aristocracy is decidedly less brill- 
iant since it has been extended. 

Under these circumstances the peers are wise, 
perhaps, to accept the situation. How should they 
fight when they have no weapons ? In 1878 there 
were only four divisions, as the formal votings are 
called, in the House of Lords, and these were on 
questions of minor importance. In 1879, when 
the foreign policy of the Government was at stake, 
only about half of the peers could be found to 
attend four divisions. Thirty -five peers were absent 
altogether from 1875 to 1880. In 1877 it was con- 
sidered remarkable that the average attendance of 
peers was close upon one hundred during the fifty- 
two sittings before Easter, and there are six hun- 
dred members of the House. In 1881 their ad- 
mirers boasted that " about one hundred and thirty 
peers address the House each session, and half 
the debates go on until close upon the dinner 
hour ! " whicli is eight o'clock. The Lords meet 
at five. 

It is seldom indeed that the state of the country 
detains the hereditary legislator from his evening 
meal. Dinner parties in London are made with 



THE HOUSE OF LOKDS. 119 

reference to the hours of the House of Commons, 
which does not sit on Wednesdays or Saturdays, 
and there are five invitations for those evenings to 
one for any other. But you can catch your lord for 
any night ; he is never prevented by public busi- 
ness — at least, not three times in a session. 

An ordinary sitting of the House of Lords is a 
dull and dreary ceremony. The hall is lofty, and 
in the dim light of an English afternoon reminds 
one of some stately vault where the remains of the 
ancestral institution may be imagined to repose. A 
few straggling gentlemen are seated on the benches, 
some mumbling remarks are made, some antiquated 
form gone through in the darkness — a new peer 
is perhaps presented in his robes, or a bill comes up 
from the Commons — and the august assembly ad- 
journs. The business of the House is carried on by 
thirty or forty peers, and these, with rare exceptions, 
maintain the debates of the session. The uni- 
formity of costume is broken only by the Lord 
Chancellor as he enters or leaves with his robes and 
his train-bearer, or the ghostly bishops who sit on 
benches by themselves, in their lawn sleeves. The 
mover and seconder of an address that is offered to 
the Queen at the opening of every session are al- 
ways in levee dress — for they are supposed to stand 
in the presence of Majesty, though Majesty never 
is there — but otherwise the peers are plainly clad, 
the older ones, as a rule, unfashionably, and more 



120 ABISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

than half of them wear their hats. All is dismal, 
decorous, and funereal. 

I have, however, seen the chamber filled in every 
seat, and the peeresses' gallery crowded. When an 
opportunity occurs to signify their opposition to a 
liberal measure the Lords turn out in force, and if, 
as once in a very great while happens, the sitting is 
late, the wives and daughters of peers come in from 
dinner in laces and diamonds, while the peers them- 
selves on these occasions are often in evening dress 
on the floor. After some bill to which their lord- 
ships are opposed has passed the House of Com- 
mons, the patricians proceed to set forth their argu- 
ments elaborately, and sometimes violently. I have 
been present at as heated discussions in the aristo- 
cratic chamber as ever I witnessed in the American 
Capitol. 

When the bill to disestablish the Irish Church 
was debated, the Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, 
stood on the steps of the throne in an excited House 
while Lord Salisbury denounced him in terms as an 
" arrogant man," and every one turned to see how 
he took it. For there is no admission to the floor 
of the House for ministers who are not peers. 
Privy Councillors, the eldest sons of peers, and 
members of the diplomatic corps may stand on the 
steps of the throne ; and, if the session is long and 
they become fatigued, these personages often sit or 
squat in extremely undignified postures behind the 



THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 121 

railings that surround the sovereign's seat. In this 
way the Prime Minister who had created thirty or 
forty peers in his time, and could have doubled the 
number had he chosen, had no seat in the aristo- 
cratic presence, and remained standing while he 
was berated by a member of the nobility. 

'Not only individuals, but the Commons them- 
selves, the coordinate branch of the Legislature, 
have no place assigned them in the Upper Chamber, 
except at the entrance and below the bar ; a relic 
this of the ancient arrogance with which the repre- 
sentatives of the people were treated by the peers. 
Even when the Commons are summoned to hear 
the reading of a speech or message from the throne, 
no seats are allowed them ; they rush in from their 
own House, pell-mell and headlong, like a parcel of 
schoolboys, to secure a place as near as possible to 
the bar which divides them from the nobility. 

On the night I speak of Dean Stanley was on 
the steps of the throne by favor, for he had many 
friends among the ushers, and "black rods," as 
well as among the Lords. He took me in to dine 
with him at the deanery, which is close to the Par- 
liament houses. One of the Irish archbishops whose 
fate was at stake accompanied us, for the debate 
was closing and a division was imminent, and no- 
body wished to go far to dinner. The Dean was an 
intimate friend of the prelate, and said to me sadly 
that this might be the last occasion when the arch- 



122 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

bishop would sit in the House of Lords. It was 
like dining with a man before his execution. But 
the archbishop was brave and talked on indifferent 
topics with the American democrat. 

That night members who rarely or never set foot 
in the House of Lords were present in scores, but at 
ordinary divisions the number who vote, small as it 
is compared with the aggregate of the peers, is col- 
lected only by the energetic pressure of the poli- 
tician called the "whip," because lie whips the 
noblemen in. The peers seem to value their privi- 
lege principally as a means of asserting their opin- 
ions when these are opposed to the policy certain in 
the end to prevail. 

While I was in England the Lords, as a body, re- 
sisted every step in the direction of progress or 
reform. They opposed the ballot, the educational 
system now in force, the disestablishment of the 
Irish Church, the abolition of purchase in the 
army, and every measure calculated to extend the 
suffrage, to favor the sale of land, or to modify the 
condition of Ireland ; yet in every case they were 
obliged to yield. Not long ago Mr. Gladstone de- 
clared : " Only for fifteen years of the last fifty has 
the ministry of the day possessed the confidence of 
the House of Lords;" that is, only for fifteen 
years out of fifty has the House of Lords been in 
harmony with the Government which represented 
the judgment and will of the people of England. 



THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 123 

If all modern ideas are not wrong, if liberalism 
does not lead, as the peers believe, only to revolu- 
tion, corruption, and anarchy, the condition of Eng- 
land has improved since the overthrow of the Lords. 
By their fruits ye shall know them. The catalogue 
of reforms which they have opposed proves not only 
their impotence in actual politics, but the unfavor- 
able nature of such influence as they still retain. 
This is shown not only negatively by what they 
have been unable to accomplish, but by the pros- 
perity of the country without them or in spite of 
them. Since political power has passed into other 
hands the population of England has doubled, its 
wealth has quintupled, its commerce has extended 
beyond comparison, its manufactures have crowded 
the shops and warehouses of the world. The mate- 
rial comfort of the people of every class has been 
marvellously increased, education has been more 
widely diffused, and whatever goes to make up the 
prosperity and happiness of a nation has been 
furthered and promoted since the downfall of the 
Lords. 

J^ewspapers in their present stage of develop- 
ment, navigation by steam, railroads, telegraphs, 
the various and extended uses of electricity — all 
have come into existence under the new order of 
things ; all are the inventions or improvements of 
the middle class ; all are the natural and legitimate 
result of the great measures which the House of 



124 AEISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

Lords resisted. Meanwhile, the grandeur of the 
empire is in no way diminished ; the influence of 
England is as potent as in any previous era ; her 
boundaries are widened ; in Africa and Asia she 
stretches out her territories. But her best soldiers 
are not the sons of lords ; her lawyers spring from 
the middle, or even the lower, class ; her merchant 
princes may not be presented at court ; her men of 
letters and science and art are not aristocrats ; her 
greatest Prime Minister for a generation refuses to 
be a peer. 



XII. 
THE PRINCESS OF WALES. 

It is sixteen years since I was presented to the 
Princess of Wales. The beauty of the royal Dane 
was then in all its freshness, and I was struck with 
the stately presence, the speaking eye, the winning 
smile, the appearance of intelligence, as well as by 
the affability of manner, which at that time was 
marked, but has not always been so conspicuous 
since. The long succession of salutations and cere- 
monies, the ever-recurring necessity for graciousness 
probably becomes irksome at times. I once heard a 
court lady say that there is always something of the 
pump-handle in royal civilities. But, if wearisome to 
dispense, they are often refreshing to the recipient. 

The Princess is more like a princess in appear- 
ance and bearing than any other I have seen ; far 
transcending her higher-born sisters-in-law, the 
daughters of the Queen and the Duchess of Edin- 
burgh ; and quite equal to any princess of the stage 
or the story-books. Yet she was born the daughter 
of an obscure half-German duke, without a proba- 
bility of ever becoming royal. Ten years after she 



126 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

came into the world it was agreed bj the great 
powers of Europe that her father should be King 
in Denmark, on the death of the sovereign then 
reigning ; and he still had not arrived at this dig- 
nity when Alexandra was sought and won bj the 
heir to the English throne. Denmark itself is no 
great things in the way of a kingdom, but Sles- 
wig-Holstein-SonderbourgGliicksbourg, the pater- 
nal duchy of the future Queen- consort of England, 
was still more inconsiderable. Her mother and 
grandmother were both petty princesses of Hesse- 
Cassel, the same insignificant little State whose sol- 
diers were sold to England, to fight us in our Revo- 
lutionary war, so that blood can hardly be said to 
tell in her case. It is not inherited grandeur that 
gives the princely air. After the heavy German 
procreators had done their part, the fairies must 
have brought their gifts to the cradle. 

This world is very much given to malice, and 
high-bred English dames are not always exempt 
from the failing. The Princess is invariably well 
dressed ; and when I once said so, a great lady re- 
plied ; " She learned how to dress when she made 
her own bonnets and gowns, on a hundred a year, 
before her father was King of Denmark." It was, 
indeed, a strange fortune that raised the daughters 
of Christian IX. to two of the proudest positions in 
Christendom. One is already Empress of All the 
Russias, and the other is mated to the man who 



THE PELNCESS OF WALES. 127 

may, one day, be sovereign of England. Such 
matches have not often been made by portionless 
maidens. But the heirs apparent to these great 
monarchies both wanted consorts who were not 
Catholic; and marriageable princesses answering 
the demand were scarce when the Czarewitch and 
the Prince of Wales arrived at their majorities. 
The sons of sovereigns, however, may not wait long 
to be wived, for the succession must be settled; 
so the two ladies stepped from their obscurity in 
Copenhagen up to the pinnacle of human grandeur, 
outranking and overtopping the daughters of the 
very potentates who had made their father royal. 
They would, doubtless, at one time have thought 
themselves honored to bear the trains of some who 
are now, or may yet be, their subjects. 

The family affection of these fortunate sisters is 
strong. They cherish the recollection of their early 
home life, and like to go back to little Denmark 
with their children and spouses and throw aside for 
a while the trappings and restraints of their more 
recent splendor ; for in Copenhagen the King and 
Queen live in great simplicity. I was once offered 
the post of Minister to the Danish court, and in- 
formed myself as to its ways. The diplomatic 
corps, I was told, and the high nobility call and 
take tea with the royal family of an afternoon. The 
revenues are so small, that the life at the palace is 
necessarily plain. 



128 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

Tlie Czarevna visited the Princess of Wales, 
while her husband was still Czarewitch, and they 
made a sightly picture as they drove about London 
together in a low, open carriage. They look alike, 
though the Princess is the prettier and by far the 
more elegant. The English common people like to 
see the family feeling respected by the highest, and 
the belief that their future Queen is a good sister 
and daughter, as well as wife and mother, adds to 
her hold on them. 

That hold is certainly strong. No member of 
the royal family is more popular with the country 
at large ; perhaps none is so popular. The people, 
of course, never see her, except in public; but 
daily, in the " season," they assemble at the gate of 
Marlborough House, when it is known that she is 
to drive ; and I doubt if among all who penetrate 
those portals the Princess has warmer admirers 
than in the congregation that waits on the outside. 
They like to see the royal children in her company, 
and the Princess often takes her daughters with 
her ; sometimes, doubtless, to gratify the common- 
alty as well as herself and her family. She dresses 
them plainly; their hats and frocks are not so 
smart by half as those of many of the children of 
wealthy Londoners who may never go to court. 

At one time there were stories of infidelity on 
the part of the Prince of Wales, and a sort of sym- 
pathy was aroused for the wife who, it was fancied. 



THE PEINCESS OF WALES. 129 

was neglected; but the Princess always behaved 
with dignity. If she thought she had wrongs, she 
betrayed neither resentment nor jealousy to the 
world, and at last it became a question whether any 
dissatisfaction had ever existed on her part — a 
triumph of discretion and decorum not often sur- 



When the Prince was ill she watched over him 
with every demonstration of devotion, and was as 
delighted as the happiest of wives when at last he 
began to mend. But, alas for poor human nature ! 
her anxiety can hardly be regarded as evidence of 
affection, for she would never have been Queen of 
England had her husband died. Had he been the 
most unfaithful of mankind she would doubtless 
have prayed just as hard for his recovery. 

At this crisis she received the greatest possible 
proof of her popularity. She was universally ad- 
mitted to be the proper person to be named for 
Eegent in case the Prince should die. The next 
heir to the throne must then have had a long mi- 
nority, and it was indispensable to consider the 
contingency of the death of the Queen. The ques- 
tion was not long in doubt. A few words were 
said here and there for the Duke of Edinburgh, but 
in every circle and class, not only among the people 
of rank and political power who were to decide, but 
in the press and with the country at large, one wn'sh 
and one opinion prevailed: in the event of the 
9 



130 ABISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

need of a Regency, the Regent must be the Prin- 
cess of Wales. 

Perhaps in part this was because the Princess 
has never been credited with ability. She does not 
lack a certain intelligence, I am told, and shows 
sufficient interest in the topics that come np at 
court ; but she has never displayed political insight 
or ambition. She has neither taste nor genius for 
the political intrigues in which so many princesses 
take delight, and no anxiety, apparently, to influ- 
ence political affairs. Had she been placed at the 
head of the State she would doubtless have done 
whatever her ministers dictated or desired. The 
Duke of Edinburgh, on the contrary, is believed to 
have a will of his own, and a sulky disposition be- 
sides, and he might have given trouble. He has 
never been popular, either in society or with the 
people at large. So the Princess was easily suc- 
cessful, though she made no effort to secure the 
prize. 

At this juncture both the Queen and the Princess 
exhibited a pathetic and beautiful bit of womanly 
feehng that became them better than crown or cor- 
onet. One of the young grooms at Sandringham 
fell ill of the same fever of which the Prince of 
Wales was believed to be dying, and these royal 
ladies visited the lad in his room at the stables, sat 
by his bedside, and displayed, and doubtless felt, a 
very touching interest in the youth whose pains 



THE PRmCESS OF WALES. 131 

and peril were the same as those of the heir to 
mightiest monarchies. The groom, however, died 
before the Prince was out of danger, and the anx- 
ioits Queen and her sad daughter-in-law sent their 
gentlemen to the funeral, while the Princess stood 
at the window to watch the procession as it bore 
the body to that dread home which prince and 
peasant must inhabit at last. Touches of genuine 
feeling like this endear the Queen to her subjects, 
and it is the same womanliness in the Princess that 
makes her popular with those who know her only 
from afar. 

She does not, however, seem to attach very 
closely those who are about her intimately. I have 
never heard these speak of her with enthusiasm. 
The people at court all call her amiable, but noth- 
ing more. She is doubtless a woman negative in 
character as well as in ability. She likes the com- 
pany of her favorites, but these are never of the 
very brilliant sort. She enjoys the opera and the 
theatre, for there she is free from the necessity of 
dispensing incessant courtesies; but she has no 
pleasures more intellectual than these. She is not 
accomplished, beyond speaking several languages, 
an art in which princes are always supposed to be 
proficient. She has heard the greatest music and 
seen the greatest paintings, and knows and to a 
degree appreciates both music and the pictorial art ; 
but this is all. 



132 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

Her temper is never unfavorably discussed, and 
her fame is as unspotted as the Queen's. Her tact 
is on most occasions sufficient, but never supreme ; 
it never rises into that genius for society and affilirs 
which makes a great woman of the world. On the 
whole, I should call her wooden ; a beautiful, grace- 
ful doll, framed to perform her public functions 
well; but she has hardly any others: her private 
life is a matter of public knowledge. She makes 
no enemies and no ardent friends ; has no enthusi- 
asms herself, and evokes none in others, except in 
those who are not close enough to perceive that the 
automaton is wound up and that the figure has 
comparatively little heart; perhaps after ail the 
very best sort of person for the place she fills. 

She is deaf and lame, but the mass of those who 
are in her presence discover neither defect. Louis 
XIV., though below the medium height, is said to 
have appeared tall to his obsequious courtiers, and 
so the Princess seems to listen and not to limp. 
The glamour that royalty throws around her con- 
ceals the comparative coldness that lies beneath a 
graceful exterior, while her intellectual dulness is 
disguised under the dignified decorums of a court. 

The Princess has apparently no personal influence 
with the Queen. Indeed, although no shadow of a 
difference has even been apparent or suggested, 
there is certainly no conspicuous intimacy between 
these august kinswomen. The Princess rarely visits 



THE PRmCESS OF WALES. 133 

the Queen at Osborne or Balmoral ; the Queen still 
more rarely goes to Sandringham or Abergeldie, the 
seats of the Prince of Wales. The name of the 
Princess does not appear in the last " Leaves from 
Our Journal in the Highlands," where Her Majesty 
catalogues all her favorites, from royal relatives 
down to gillies and collies. The sovereign's own 
daughters arrange her robes when she opens Parlia- 
ment, but this graceful duty is never performed by 
the future Queen. 

The Princess, however, often holds drawing- 
rooms in the absence of Her Majesty. She repre- 
sents the Queen always at court concerts and balls, 
and sometimes on still more public occasions. There 
can, of course, be no question of her rank, and the 
Queen is too rigid in her regard for etiquette to 
ignore or neglect what is due to the wife of her heir 
apparent. The relations between the ladies are all 
that are required, but in this, as in her other ex- 
cellencies, the Princess never oversteps the limits of 
moderation. She possesses, indeed, all the moderate 
virtues, all the negative qualities desirable in her 
station ; but she has not one tithe of the heart of 
the Queen, or of the faulty Prince of Wales. 

She lives in forms, and naturally thinks much of 
them. Her personal attendants are required to 
observe every punctilio. She goes through her own 
part, and expects them to do the same. The royal 
yacht was once arriving at Cowes with the Prince 



134 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

and Princess abroad, and an immense concourse 
awaited them at the landing. But the Princess had 
been seasick all day, and was not recovered when 
the Prince himself came to fetch her to meet the 
multitude. Her ladies assured His Eoyal Highness 
that their mistress was unable to stand. But the 
excuse could not be accepted ; the people must not 
be disappointed ; and the Princess w^as decked in 
her jewels between the paroxysms of sickness, and, 
pale and faint, was led out to courtesy and smile to 
her future subjects. 

If etiquette is thus inexorable for the mistress, it 
is, of course, never relaxed for the maid. A count- 
ess whose name is well known in America was in 
attendance on the Princess at Osborne, when a 
friend of mine went to call on her. The guest was 
received in a bedroom, for there was no other place 
reserved for the ladies-in-waiting, and they could 
not, of course, entertain their acquaintances in the 
apartments of royalty. While the two ladies were 
talking a summons came for the countess. " The 
Princess was going to bathe." " But, my dear, you 
do not bathe because the Princess does ? " " Cer- 
tainly I do." *' But you are not well ; you may be 
injured." " Ah ! my dear, I am in waiting." And, 
as there was but one room, the visitor was obliged 
to leave, while the countess dressed to attend the 
Princess in her bath. 



XIII. 
AMERICAN MINISTERS. 

I SUPPOSE a man can hardly be American Min- 
ister in London without contracting something of 
the aristocratic feeling. The disease is in the air. 
Everything fosters the delusion that he belongs to 
the oligarchy. His precedence is defined ; he has 
his place in every pageant or parade ; he is called 
" His Excellency ; " his carriage need not stand in 
the rank at balls, but drives magnificently by all 
the lesser nobility, vrho fall back to let him pass. 
He even enters the ambassadors' door at court. The 
sturdiest republican soon gets used to the deference, 
and comes to think it appropriate as well as agree- 
able. I heard one of our ministers say he would 
rather be an English duke than anything else on 
earth, and another declare that England is the only 
country in which a gentleman should either live or 
die. They flatter themselves that their tendencies 
and tastes are English, but it is aristocratic English 
only ; none of them want to belong to the middle 
class. Whenever they can, they claim connection 
with the aristocracy, happy if they can trace a 



136 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

pedigree to some ignoble offshoot of a noble 
bouse, which repudiates as often as it admits 
the consanguinity; or prouder of a descent from 
a country squire who had a coat of arms than to 
bear American names that genius has made ilJus- 
trious. 

'Tis strange the effect the contact has. There 
have been American Ministers at London as punc- 
tilious, as exacting, a^ regardless of courtesy when 
mere etiquette was in question, as any of their 
colleagues in the corps. I have known them wear 
knee-breeches at church when evei*y one else was 
in plain clothes, and insist on their precedence 
with all the pertinacity of peeresses or parvenus. 
There was once a question of the rank of the 
daughters of diplomatists. Several of the ambassa- 
dors and envoys were widowers, and in society their 
unmarried daughters had long been allowed the 
precedence accorded to wives. But at last the 
wives demurred, and the mighty matter was referred 
to the sovereign. Before the decision came I heard 
an American Minister say to his wife : " If those 
girls attempt to pass before you, I order you to push 
thern back." The Queen, however, spoke in time, 
and there was no necessity for so high-handed a 
vindication of democratic claims. The daughters 
of a diplomatist, it was decreed, possess no rank at 
court. If they have a mother, they follow her ; if 
not, they must attend some other diplomatic 



AMERICAN MINISTERS. 137 

matron, of whose suite or family they are supposed, 
for the occasion, to form a part. 

All daughters but her own, indeed, receive rigor- 
ous measure from the Queen ; and against diplo- 
matic daughters she seems to bear almost a special 
grudge, refusing them the privileges accorded to 
daughters whose rank is derived from birth. Per- 
haps this springs from the English sentiment that 
official rank is insignificant. Diplomatic preced- 
ence is, in royal eyes, the mere fringe of office ; not, 
like inherited precedence, a permanent superiority 
— ^the essential and integral appurtenance of rank 
that is not acquired. English diplomatists them- 
selves lose all their official precedence the moment 
they set foot in England. Sir Edward Thornton, 
when he went to court, after representing Her Maj- 
esty for years in Washington, was only a knight of 
recent creation. He did not even belong to the 
aristocracy, and took his place far down the line — a 
very worthy person who had risen from the middle 
class. 

Some years ago an American Minister had sev- 
eral daughters living with him, one of whom was a 
widow. This lady was invited to one court ball 
with her father and his family, but for the second 
she received no card. The minister, supposing the 
omission accidental, sent to the Lord Chamberlain 
to have it rectified. But the court functionaries 
explained that the exclusion was designed. One 



138 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

invitation had been sent to the lady out of compli- 
ment to her father, but she must not expect to be 
admitted every time. Having married, she had left 
her father's family, in the estimation of the Queen. 
For all these rules are the express determination of 
the sovereign — the fruit of calm, ripe judgment 
and profound deliberation on her part. 

The American envoys are usually very much dis- 
gusted because they are not ambassadors, for many 
privileges are accorded to these highest potentates 
of diplomacy that are not conceded to mere minis- 
ters. It is ambassadors only who can claim the 
title of Excellency ; to others it is given by courtesy 
alone. Ambassadors only have a right to demand 
an interview with the sovereign ; and on the few 
occasions when the Queen still entertains in person 
and in state, at I'oyal weddings or ceremonial 
funerals, her diplomatic invitations are restricted to 
ambassadors and to the representatives of such sov- 
ereigns as are connections of her family. This, of 
course, always excludes the American Minister, who 
sometimes never goes to Windsor except to present 
his credentials and his recall. But, more humili- 
ating still, a minister may wait an hour at the 
Foreign Office for an interview with the Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs, and at the end of the hour see 
an ambassador arrive and go in before him. The 
representatives of the great republic feel that these 
things should not be ; that the dignity of the United 



AMERICAN MINISTERS. 139 

States requires that its diplomatic servants should 
have equal standing with those of any other power. 
And it is hard to say that they are wrong. If we 
maintain a representative at a court where these 
rules prevail, we should for our own sake insure him 
proper consideration. The Minister of the United 
States should not be thrust back because of lower 
rank by the representative of any petty State that 
happens to keep an ambassador. 

But the ministers sometimes show more feeling 
on this subject than comports with the station that 
they fill. One of them begged a British Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs to address our Government, 
and request the elevation of the American legation 
into an embassy. He was so pertinacious in his 
applications that the Englishman complained of 
them in society ; a fact that did not add to the dig- 
nity which the envoy was so anxious to maintain. 

I have said that the ministers become punctilious. 
One of them was dining at an American house, 
and as he took his hostess down to dinner she asked 
him if he would consent to sit on her left at table, 
so that she might arrange her guests, only eight or 
ten in number, more agreeably. But the inflexible 
republican replied : " Do you know that I outrank 
a duke?"— a supererogatory illustration, for their 
were no dukes at dinner. So the poor little lady's 
table was disarranged, but the American Minister 
maintained his place. The worst of it was, he was 



140 ARISTOCRACY JN ENGLAND. 

wrong in his etiquette. By express determination 
of Her Majesty, foreign envoys follow dukes. But 
our countryman was new at his post, and doubtless 
learned his lesson better afterward. If he didn't, 
the dukes soon told him. 

A minister, indeed, must often shudder when he 
remembers the blunders he has made. One of our 
representatives on the Continent who later thought 
himself an authority on ceremonies, in the early 
days of his exaltation kindly left a card on the 
King, whereupon His Majesty remarked that he 
had been told Americans were sometimes unmind- 
ful of forms, but this one had paid him an honor 
he had never before received. 

But not every American representative is so ab- 
sorbed in the sense of his own consequence as to 
forget or neglect politeness for punctilio. While 
General Schenck was Minister to England, Mr. 
E-everdy Johnson, who had held the same position 
not very long before, was visiting London, and both 
gentlemen dined with me on the same evening. 
Before we went in to dinner. General Schenck par- 
ticularly requested that I would give Mr. Johnson 
precedence. His predecessor was old, and had, of 
course, been used to taking the first place, and the 
General wished to show him deference. This grace- 
ful act was prompted by sheer good breeding, not 
indifference ; for I had expected to invite a Cardi- 
nal for the same evening, and inquired of General 



AMERICAN MINISTERS. 141 

Schenck about the precedence. He said that, as 
American Minister, he could not waive his rank 
in favor of a prelate who, though a prince in the 
Church of Kome, had no recognized x^lace accord- 
ing to Enghsh rules. 

Mr. Pierrepont, also, always waived his rank in 
favor of General Grant, and this was not entirely 
a work of supererogation. Many Englishmen other- 
wise would have placed the actual representative 
of the United States before the ex-President. At a 
dinner at Kensington Palace, where Lord Lome 
was host, he inquired of Mr. Pierrepont, before the 
guests were arranged, whether he waived his rank 
in favor of General Grant. 

For in the country to which he is accredited, a 
diplomatic representative takes precedence even of 
a member of the Government that he serves. Mr. 
Motley told me that, when he was minister at 
Yienna, before the days of the German empire, he 
once had Bismarck and the Prussian ambassador 
both at dinner. Bismarck was chief of the Foreign 
Office in Berlin at the time, and the question of 
precedence was raised, but settled in favor of the 
ambassador, and Bismarck followed his own sub- 
ordinate. 

All is not happiness at foreign courts. The min- 
isters' families have their own difficulties. They 
always want to snub the wives of the Secretaries of 
legation, and the Secretaries' wives, being good 



142 AEISTOCKACY IN ENGLAITO. 

Americans, won't stand the snubbing. I recollect 
one who offered to matronize the daughter of a 
widowed minister, and the shock which the pro- 
posal created was not surprising to one familiar 
with the workings of the feminine mind. I think 
myself the offer was mere bravado. The same lady 
has since been a minister's wife herself, and I doubt 
not she made her Secretaries' wives know their 
place. There are no sticklers for subordination 
like servants who have passed through the degrees, 
and no such disciplinarians in the army as officers 
who have risen from the ranks. 

Secretaries of legation, indeed, are a frequent 
source of trouble. The ministers have not their 
choice of them, as a rule. They must take whom- 
soever the Washington officials send. One veteran 
in etiquette had a Western editor inflicted on him, 
who went to court without a waistcoat, and, of 
course, was turned away. And the minister was a 
Bostonian ! 

There are other trials still for the luckless repre- 
sentative. I have already described the struggles 
of Americans determined to go to court. But some 
of our compatriots are not content with palatial hos- 
pitalities ; they want invitations to private houses, 
too, and expect their minister to provide them. 
One gentleman, not altogether unknown on this 
side of the Atlantic, after reading the list of private 
parties printed every Monday in the Morning Post 



AMERICAN MINISTERS. 143 

to refresh the memory of the aristocrats, cut out 
the catalogue and enclosed it to the minister, and 
requested ^'tickets" for the entire schedule. 

But the worst troubles of the ministers are about 
their clothes. Some years ago, Congress established 
a rule that the diplomatic representatives of the 
United States should wear no uniform whatever 
not prescribed by law. Up to that time, our min- 
isters abroad had worn a suitable enough sort of 
dress which made them look somewhat like other 
people at court ; not conspicuous by plainness, nor 
ostentatious from ornament. There was no author- 
ity for the custom, but none against it, until some 
rampant republican declared it unworthy of a State 
without a King to deck its ministers in foreign frip- 
pery, and the law prohibiting diplomatic uniforms 
was passed. 

The envoy at the Court of St. James was in- 
formed of the rule, and he, in his turn, notified the 
English Secretary for Foreign Affairs. An elab- 
orate correspondence thereupon ensued, which was 
submitted to the Queen herself, and a compromise 
was finally agreed upon, to the effect that at levees 
the United States Minister and the members of his 
legation would be received in ordinaiy evening 
dress, but at drawing-rooms and at court balls and 
concerts they were to wear knee-breeches and 
swords. This was approved by the Secretary of 
State for the time being, and has since been the 



IM AitlSTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

rule, but it is in positive violation of the law. The 
ministers, however, dislike very much to go without 
a uniform. They are conspicuous in their plain 
clothes, and are, in fact, the only people but the 
court newsman without a court dress, and they con- 
form to the violation unscrupulously. Some years 
ago, one of them had a right to wear a military uni- 
form, and he has been the envy of all his successors 
since. 

The Queen, nevertheless, was entirely in the 
wrong in deciding upon the dress of a foreign en- 
voy. She receives the Turkish Ambassador in his 
trousers and fez, because this is the costume in 
which he presents himself to his own sovereign, 
and she has no right to make the American Minis- 
ter show his legs. If the United States Govern- 
ment should peremptorily forbid its representatives 
to appear at balls and concerts unless in the dress 
they wear at the levees of the President, Her Maj- 
esty would be obliged to yield. The ambassador 
who carried his whole retinue to court, in spite of 
the rules, succeeded ; and whenever our ministers 
show similar pluck, they will win a similar victory. 

It is true there seems as much reason why a uni- 
form should be worn by officers in the diplomatic 
service as by those in the army and navy. All 
alike may be called upon to represent their country 
abroad. But having taken a national stand, it is 
not becoming to recede from it. The simplicity of 



AMERICAJSr MINISTEKS. 145 

the rule is not onlj significant of republican feeling, 
but in accordance with all modern tendencies. For- 
eigners have become familiar with the fashion, and 
many approve it. While Mr. Pierrepont was Min- 
ister at London he attended an opening of Parlia- 
ment in plain clothes, and the London press declared 
that the simple dignity of his appearance contrasted 
favorably with the gorgeous array of barbaric 
envoys and European ambassadors. The Japanese 
and some of the South American legations have 
already adopted the simpler mode, and when Presi- 
dent Grevy, of the French republic, first received 
the diplomatic coi*ps they presented themselves in 
frock coats and trousers, out of deference to the 
democratic idea. On the whole, it might be well 
for the State Department to insist that its subordi- 
nates should obey the law. 
10 



XIV. 
MANNERS. 

The eifeet of rank upon those who possess it is 
certainly vulgarizing. It is common, I know, to 
suppose and assert the contrary. The refining and 
exalting results of an aristocracy are always pro- 
claimed by its advocates. We are told that a class 
set apart from the rest of the world and above it, is 
sure to be superior both in refinement of breeding 
and distinction of character. The great mass of 
English writers have constantly maintained that the 
npper class of their countrymen set a brilliant 
example to the world at large, in manners, if not 
always in morals ; and the nobility has been viewed 
by most of the English and by all Americans 
through the atmosphere created by these writers, 
themselves bred to believe their aristocracy excep- 
tionally superior and refined. 

But the English men and women of letters are 
not members of the aristocracy. They belong em- 
phatically to the middle class ; and if some of them 
are now and then admitted to the houses of the 
great it is not as equals, but to amuse and interest 



MANNERS. 147 

the nobility. They are always at the tail of the 
procession to dinner, where the most liberal peer 
will think them in their place, an opinion in which 
they themselves are certain to agree. It is rarely, 
indeed, that they get so far as this, and only a very 
few of them ever see the intimate life of the aristoc- 
racy. But, being people of sentiment and imag- 
ination, and, in intellectual qualities, often far 
superior to the upper class, they make up their 
minds what the manners of a great aristocracy 
should be, and describe them accordingly. Even 
when in their own persons they have penetrated 
behind the veil, they are either so awe-struck at the 
privilege, or so prepossessed by their partialities, 
that their vision is blurred, and they see and tell 
what they think exists, not what is actually before 
their eyes. It is the glamour that genius has 
thrown around the aristocracy that gives it the brill- 
iancy and fascination that have dazzled the world. 
The pictures of De Gramont, Horace Walpole, and 
Lord Hervey, aristocrats themselves, are very dif- 
ferent from the flattered portraits by most of the 
writers of other days ; and Charles Greville's earlier 
volumes are proof that the most glowing descrip- 
tions of recent times are conceived in as absolute 
ignorance of the reality. 

The high English almost always possess com- 
plete ease of manner, but almost never complete 
elegance, and both peculiarities are attributable to 



148 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

their rank. As a rule, tliej are remarkable for 
repose of bearing. There is little pushing when the 
aristocrats are by themselves, though plenty of it 
among those who wish to associate with them. The 
position of the nobility and their connections is so 
established that nobody is offended because some 
one of higher rank goes before him, nor elated when 
he himself precedes an acknowledged inferior. It 
is the new and uncertain people who struggle. To 
the aristocrats their rights are usually conceded 
without a contest. This naturally makes them 
calm, assured, serene. 

But it also makes them indifferent, and sometimes 
insolent, toward the rest of the world. The fact 
that they are placed so high, so much above other 
people with education and taste and refinement 
equal and often superior to their own, creates a 
carelessness and superciliousness of behavior and 
feeling not only offensive, but almost coarse. If 
they are well bred, so much the better ; but if not, 
they stand quite as secure. The pedestal is just as 
high, no matter what figure is placed on it. A 
duke may be a boor or a clown, a duchess may be 
illiterate or drunken or immoral — and there have 
been instances of all this within the last twenty years 
— but they are dukes and duchesses all the same. 
Their precedence is not disturbed, their notice is 
still an honor, their society is courted, their alliance 
is sought, if not by all, yet by so many that they 



MANNERS. 149 

never discover tbe deficiency. There are men of 
the highest rank who turn palaces into dog-kennels 
and consort with pugilists and yet marry into ducal 
families; and I have seen tipsy duchesses dance 
after dinner with shawls and castanets before am- 
bassadors and Prime Ministers, when but for their 
rank they would not have been tolerated. 

It is the consciousness of their superiority that 
makes them think it unnecessary to cultivate their 
manners or reform their morals. I once heard a 
countess account for the manner of one of the court 
ladies, which was indeed exceptionally soft and 
charming : " I suppose," she said, " it proceeds from 
her being always with a superior, always obliged to 
defer to another." This is the key to the feeling 
of the aristocracy. They have no need, they think, 
to defer, with equals or inferiors. They can gratify 
their moods or their whims, be amiable, or disa- 
greeable, or indifferent, as they please. Toward 
those above them they are deferential in the ex- 
treme; servile it seems to an American, and cer- 
tainly obsequious. With those whom they like they 
can be as affable as any people in the world, and 
their affability is the more agreeable because what 
is not common is always more highly prized. Like 
everybody else they can be civil enough when it is 
their interest to be so. But when none of these 
reasons exists — interest, or preference, or necessity — 
they are often cold, supercilious, and arrogant to a 



150 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

degree unknown in what is called good company 
elsewhere. 

The brother of a duke not long ago paid his ad- 
dresses to an American woman of fortune who was 
disinclined to listen to him. He persisted, however, 
till at a final refusal he got up from his knees and 
exclaimed : *' Oh ! you cannot understand us. You 
are not made of the same clay." Our country- 
woman remembered his lordship's family history, 
and replied : " Xo, indeed. I am not descended 
from a king, nor his mistress." 

Thackeray was once staying at a country-house 
where one of the high-born guests inquired after 
dinner : " Who is that agreeable man ? " When he 
was told it was the famous novelist, the representa- 
tive of the peerage remarked : " You surprise me. 
I thought he was a gentleman." 

It is often not noblesse oblige, but noblesse excuse, 
A duchess will not return visits unless it suits her ; 
but if she opens her house for a ball, all the world 
goes, and is careful to leave cards immediately after- 
ward, so as to be invited next time. 

An old peeress not now living, who had seen 
much of the world, said to me the night I made 
her acquaintance : " What do you think of us Eng- 
lish ? Are we not all very rude ? " I replied that 
I had received too many courtesies in England to 
make this admission ; but she went on : *' Oh, I 
know we are ill bred. I never see a stranger but 



MANNEKS. 151 

my first impulse is to be rude to him." The next 
day she asked me to stay a week at her country- 
house, and became one of my intimate friends. 

I once saw a duchess drive off from a country- 
house where she had been visiting. Her bonnet was 
exceedingly shabby, and her sister, a countess, was 
teasing her to change it for a smarter one. " A 
duchess," she said, " and drive in such a bonnet ! " 
But the duchess laughed, and replied : " Where is 
the use of being a duchess if I can't wear what 
bonnet I please ? " It was all in raillery, of course, 
but there was a genuine feeling under the raillery. 

Not long ago some one said in my hearing of the 
wife of an American President : " Her manners are 
as good as those of a duchess." " But why," it was 
asked, '' should a duchess have better manners 
than any one else ? " Thereupon an American ex- 
claimed : " If they don't have good manners, what 
are they for ? " !N"ow, as a rule, the duchesses have 
the worst manners of any women in the peerage. 
Nobody is born a duchess, so they all must acquire 
their rank by marriage ; and their heads are often 
completely turned by the elevation. Many of them 
have been of families quite without the pale of the 
peerage; they are thus absolute parvenus, and a 
parvenu peeress is usually downright vulgar, in her 
consciousness of grandeur. The daughters of dukes, 
who often descend in life as they go along, for the 
most part are better bred than their mothers. 



152 AKISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

The men, as a rale, are less insolent in bearing, 
if not in behavior, but just as selfish, just as de- 
termined to do as thej choose, without regard to 
the feelings of their inferiors ; and in their eyes 
nearly all the world are their inferiors. Their rank 
not only gives them this indifference; it makes 
them narrow, prejudiced, provincial, satisfied with 
themselves. With every good thing in life at their 
command, with everybody in England at their feet, 
they are naturally disinclined to effort of any sort. 
A duke once said to me : *' I suppose I ought to go 
to America to improve my mind." He knew very 
well that his mind needed improvement, but he was 
a duke all the same. 

There are, of course, many members of the aris- 
tocracy of admirable character and attractive quali- 
ties ; some who feel the requirements and responsi- 
bilities of their position, and are worthy of their 
nobility. I certainly had reason to appreciate the 
worth and admire the charm of many individuals, 
but those who were charming and wortliy were so, 
not because of their rank, but because of tKeir per- 
sonal quality. They would have been equally ad- 
mirable and attractive in another rank and another 
sphere. Barring a certain brusqueness which almost 
never wears off, and the lack of that elegance which 
they almost never acquire, the most rounded men 
of the world I have ever known, not perhaps the 
most highly accomplished, but the healthiest in 



MANNERS. 153 

tone, the most general in information, and, when 
you know them well, the most genial in sentiment 
— those who best combine the results of life and 
culture — have been the very best of the English 
aristocracy. ! si sic omnes ! I must say, how- 
ever, that these were oftener connected with noble 
families than the heads of those families themselves. 

But I saw also something of what is called the 
upper middle class — the literary and professional 
people. I got glimpses at the life of the great mer- 
chants and manufacturers, and I found among them 
quite as admirable specimens of English ladies and 
gentlemen as in the aristocracy ; quite as genuine 
refinement, more regard for the feelings of others, 
and, unless a lord or a lady came along, quite as 
much innate dignity. In the presence of the aris- 
tocracy, however, they all mentally get down on 
their hands and knees. 

The influence of rank, I repeat, is not refining. 
It not only magnifies the importance of externals 
and depreciates that of essential qualities, but it 
has not the effect claimed for it, of inspiring its 
possessors to keep themselves up to a high stand- 
ard. It may do this in some rare instances, with 
superior natures, which would be lofty without the 
stimulus of rank ; but with the mass of those who 
enjoy it, who are commonplace enough, it has the 
contrary effect. It encourages them to dispense 
with effort, it inspires an offensive pride, it relieves 



154 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

from the obligation of courtesy, it destroys oiitnght 
that delicate consideration for the rights and espe- 
cially the feelings of others, which is at the basis of 
every grace that makes life or character beautiful. 

Talent and energy and natural moral excellence 
are distributed pretty equally, according to my ob- 
servation, among men of every country and every 
grade. There are as many fools, and rakes, and 
knaves among the aristocracy as among the same 
number of men and women in any other class in 
England or elsewhere. There are also many vulgar 
people of the highest birth. There is dishonorable 
conduct in men of greatest rank and oldest names. 
The institution does not prevent these things. 
Blood does not tell ; or if it tells, it tells the wrong 
way. Taking the aristocracy as a whole, judging 
it neither by the exceptionally excellent nor by the 
exceptionally vulgar or depraved, but as a class, it 
did not strike me as superior in ability, character, 
culture, or breeding to the same number of people 
who could be culled from the choicest circles of 
half a dozen different quarters of democratic Amer- 
ica. I am sure there are 583 gentlemen in 
America the equals of the peers, and five or even 
ten thousand men and women who would not 
suffer by comparison with their families. 



XV. 
CASTE. 

If the influence of the aristocracy is vulgarizing 
upon the aristocrats themselves, rendering them 
often arrogant, supercilious and rude, it is still 
more so with their inferiors, debasing the spirit and 
degrading the behavior to an extent incomprehen- 
sible to an American, in persons who in other re- 
spects are neither abject nor servile. When one 
considers the character and history of the race, the 
grovelling of an Englishman before a lord is one of 
the marvels of modern times. There is nothing 
like it in any civilized nation on the globe. 
Neither the peasant of France or Spain, nor the 
private soldier of Germany, nor the lazzarone of 
ISTaples, nor even the emancipated Russian serf 
manifests in the presence of a superior that convic- 
tion of the existence of a caste composed of his 
" betters," which marks the educated Briton of the 
middle class. The sentiment is really more re- 
markable in the educated than in the ignorant, for 
in the latter it can be excused or comprehended ; 
but the prostration of spirit and manner, the un- 



156 ARISTOCRACY EST ENGLAND. 

covering of tlie whole being, without any purpose 
or aim of sycophancy or interest, in a man or 
woman of culture and refinement and character, 
because of the presence of a person of rank trans- 
cends explanation. The very word " betters " has 
a meaning that is shocking to think of. 

A woman of rank once asked me what, of all I 
had seen in England, struck me most forcibly. I 
had no doubt whatever, and answered : " The dis- 
tinction of classes, the existence of caste." " But," 
she inquired, " do you really mean to say that in 
America the great merchant's daughter does not 
look down on the little grocer's daughter? " " Per- 
haps," said I, " the great merchant's daughter does 
look down, but very certainly the little grocer's 
daughter does not look up ; " and the whole com- 
pany was horrified at the idea of a country where 
the little grocers' daughters " don't look up." 

This, indeed, is the difference between English 
and American life. In England everybody looks 
up. The most accomplished scholars, the men of 
science and letters, the artists, the great lawyers 
and physicians, even the politicians born without 
the pale, all look up to the aristocracy. 

Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, undoubtedly the 
two greatest statesmen England has produced since 
the days of Fox and Pitt, who have swayed the 
destinies and moulded the political character of the 
country for nearly a quarter of a century, each 



CASTE. 157 

sprang from the middle class, and neither ever 
freed himself altogether from his awe of the aristoc- 
racy. Gladstone has done more to transmute lib- 
eral ideas into realities than any other Englishman 
that ever lived ; yet not long ago he used these 
words : " So far as a man in my station can be sup- 
posed to understand or enter into the feelings of 
one of the rank of a duke ; " and Disraeli, although 
he made himself a peer, could not get over his ad- 
miration and reverence for a born nobleman. His 
own adherents made this weakness their butt. 
Even after he had negotiated the treaty of Berlin, 
had snatched Constantinople from the grasp of 
Eussia, and received the Order of the Garter from 
the Queen, I heard Tory wits, both men and 
women, laugh at his fondness for dukes, and de- 
clare that he was never so happy as when seated 
between duchesses, no matter how ugly or old. 

For it is not enough to belong to the nobility ; 
you must inherit the title to feel like an aristocrat. 
The law lords are always slightingly spoken of as 
new creations; people tell you how they are de- 
scended from barbers and tailors ; and any duke with 
proper sentiment would rather his daughter were 
married to a stupid country squire of ancient family 
than to one of your modern Lord Chancellors. It 
is not till the blood of two or three generations has 
washed away the stain of plebeian origin that they 
take their place without uneasiness among the peers. 



158 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

It is not only the cliiefs in politics who are 
affected by the feeling of caste. In 1874, when 
Mr. Gladstone withdrew for a while from public 
affairs, the Liberals were obliged to select another 
leader. Mr. Forster was then by all odds their 
strongest and ablest man, but they had also Sir 
William Harcourt, Mr. Bright, Mr. Childei*s, Mr. 
Goschen, and others distinguished for intelligence 
and accomplishment. Yet the Marquis of Harting- 
ton, possessed of no striking qualifications of char- 
acter or capacity, only the heir to a dukedom, was 
preferred. Had it not been for his rank he would 
never have been thought of; but all, it was said, 
could submit to his pre-eminence without humilia- 
tion. No one could object to a leader of so exalted 
rank and inconspicuous intellect ; while if Forster 
or one of the others became chief, it would be a 
reflection on the abilities of those who were not 
preferred. And this was in the Liberal party of 
England ! 

Literature hurries after politics to bend before the 
lords. Froude and Lecky have written with aU 
their force and eloquence on the "Uses of the 
Aristocracy " and the " Landed Gentry," to which 
they do not belong. They are as able and accom- 
plished as any men in England to-day, and at least 
the intellectual equals of any living peer ; but they 
want some one above them — some one "to kotow 
to." 



CASTE. 159 

A literary woman, whose name and works are 
deserv^edly popular both in England and America, 
and who had seen enough of London society, one 
would suppose, to accustom her to the presence of 
persons of rank, could never overcome her awe for 
the upper classes. I went one day to call upon a 
friend, who told me that the novelist had just left 
the room, and that upon entering she had exclaimed : 
" Oh ! I am such a snob that I am ashamed. I have 
been taking tea at a house where a countess came 
in, and it fluttered me so that I couldn't take off my 
gloves, and spilt all my tea." 

And so, all up and down the scale. I once heard 
a woman of fashion say of some young girl just 
entering the world, who was remarkable for her self- 
possession : " She could go into a room full of duch- 
esses and not be afraid." 

A great merchant said to me when we were talk- 
ing of the English love for sport, which in its excess 
I did not commend : " But how shall our aristocracy 
be amused 'i We must amuse our aristocracy." He 
evidently thought it one of the duties of the English 
nation to amuse its aristocracy. 

When General Grant was in England he did not 
confine his visits to the nobility. He was the guest 
of the Mayors of all the prominent towns, and of 
manufacturers and merchants and other middle-class 
people, many of them as charming and cultivated 
in their way as any of the aristocracy. But they 



160 AEISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

could not conceive that a mere ex-President was 
the equal of an earl. At one manufacturing town 
he stayed at a house where every honor was paid 
him and every courtesy extended. But his hosts 
took him to visit the steward of a lord who lived 
near by ; he was permitted to see the state apart- 
ments in the absence of "his lordship," and he 
lunched in the land steward's room, and not in the 
earl's. The steward was probably an abler and 
better educated man than his master, and General 
Grant was too good a democrat not to appreciate 
this fact and to respect his host; but if he had 
been an English nobleman, neither steward nor 
manufacturer would have dreamed of entertaining 
him. 

Not many years ago a statue of Mr. Peabody was 
erected in London, the w^ork of our gifted country- 
man. Story. The Prince of Wales was present at 
the unveiling, and Mr. Motley, then Minister to 
England, delivered the address. It was an impres- 
sive circumstance — the commemoration by English- 
men of the munificence and charity of an American, 
■who had bestowed his munificence on Englishmen. 
The presence of the heir to the throne and of the 
American Minister made the incident international ; 
but the American artist was not invited. The city 
authorities of London looked upon him as a stone- 
cutter, or at best as a tradesman who had sold them 
the result of his labor. Mr. Motley had to make a 



CASTE. 161 

persistent application before they consented to in- 
clude the sculptor in the ceremonies of which his 
own work was not only the principal ornament, but 
the occasion. In the eyes of the London citizen an 
artist is not an aristocrat ; he is no better than one 
of themselves. 

Adelaide Kemble Sartoris once told me a story 
about herself that illustrates the social situation in 
England. A great lady — which Mrs. Sartoris said 
she was not — had sent out cards for a ball, of course 
to the aristocracy. The woman of genius was 
about to give a dinner : her dinners were famous, 
for the company was of the rarest and choicest 
kind ; poetry and wit and science and art came to 
her table often rather than to a lord's. The great 
lady wanted to go to one of these dinners, and sent 
word to Mrs. Sartoris that if she would ask her to 
the dinner, Mrs. Sartoris and her daughter might 
come to the ball. Mrs. Sartoris said she wanted her 
daughter to be seen at so grand a house, so she ate 
her portion of dirt and exchanged invitations with 
the peeress. The great lady went to the dinner, 
and the great genius and her daughter went to the 
ball. 

I knew a clever American who had been strug- 
gling for a long while to get into English society, 
and had not succeeded. He was in every way 
fitted, but he had not the entree or the introduc- 
tions. At last he got afloat a little and asked me to 
11 



162 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

dinner to meet some lords. The dinner was given 
to show his success ; but the lords were all clever, 
and the J went to his table because their host was 
also clever, and they knew thej would enjoy them- 
selves, not because they thought he was of their 
world. One of the company said to me that my 
countryman was getting along, but he couldn't be 
considered to have succeeded till he could get stupid 
lords. 

The feeling of which I write extends to every 
sphere ; it permeates England. The reverence that 
Gladstone and Disraeli showed is parodied in 
the sentiment of the servants, who regard the 
lords as beings of a different race from themselves. 
Even when the great people condescend, the ser- 
vants never allow their own heads to be turned. 
When the master dances with the housemaid or the 
mistress with the butler, no liberties are taken in 
return. The great gulf is still impassable. Mr. 
Auberon Herbert is the brother of the Earl of Car- 
narvon, but a radical. He prides himself on ignor- 
ing the distinctions of rank. When he hires a new 
servant he is said to ask him to tea, and he offers 
his hand to the menials of the noblemen whom he 
visits. A butler, who did not refuse this honor, 
afterward spoke of it with sorrow and deprecation 
to his own master. " I know my place, my lord, 
and that is more than Mr. Auberon Herbert knows 
his." 



CASTE. 163 

This persistent humility is common with the 
class, and is manifested even toward republicans. 
I once found it convenient to assign to my valet a 
room in a part of the house near my own, and 
thought he would be pleased with the situation ; 
but he told me respectfully he didn't like it at all. 
He was a servant, not a gentleman ; he didn't want 
to be treated like a gentleman, nor to live in a gen- 
tleman's apartments. It was not proper. 

They sometimes show this same appreciation of 
propriety in a different way. A cook, some time 
ago, took service with a physician who was a baronet. 
She knew her master's title, and did not suspect 
his occupation, but as soon as she discovered the 
reality she gave warning. She had only been used, 
she said, to living with the gentry. 

I recollect visiting the ruins of Eaglan Castle, 
where the porter, in showing the great hall, is sure 
to announce that here once feasted a hundred and 
forty lords and gentlemen, every one of whom was 
proud and honored to serve his Grace the Duke of 
Beaufort. Soon afterward I was staying at the 
country seat of the present Earl Fortescue. Mr. 
Motley was also a guest, and, reviving his historical 
lore, he reminded his host that in other days an earl 
would have been served by attendants kneeling. 
The actual service offered to dukes by lords and 
gentlemen is nearly past, but the parasites of the 
modern peers are as obsequious at heart as their 



16i ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

predecessors, and if the lackeys are not still on their 
knees at table, thej are prostrate all their lives in 
sentiment. 

I could fill pages with proof of the reverence for 
rank which many of the English besides Lecky and 
Froude defend, declaring that it exalts and refines 
the people who pay it : we all need something to 
venerate, they say. But the question is whether 
rank is the thing. In England, however, there is no 
question. The greatest nobles feel themselves hon- 
ored by attendance on royalty, and their servants 
are conscious of no degradation in the duties they 
perform lower down, while the culture and genius 
of England are proud to pay both homage to the 
Queen and obeisance to the lords. To Americans 
this feature of caste is the most curious in the entire 
national character. That in the country of Carlyle 
and Bright, of Huxley and Mill, where the last 
results of modern thought and material civilization 
are soonest reached and often widest spread, where 
law and freedom are at least as universal in their 
prevalence as in America — this relic of barbarism 
should still survive, wrought into the very nature of 
the people — is as wonderful as if amid the congre- 
gations of Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's one 
should suddenly stumble on the worship of Isis or 
of Jove. 



XVI. 

ILLEGITIMACY. 

One of his subjects said that Charles II. was the 
father of many of his people in a literal sense. He 
recruited the ranks of the nobility largely with his 
children and their mothers, and at least five Eng- 
lish dukes to-day can trace their lineage to the mon- 
arch who left no legitimate descendant. One of 
these had a father-in-law who boasted a similar con- 
nection with a later sovereign, and of course was 
titled. The two noblemen were at a levee together, 
some years ago, and as the carriage of each stood at 
the door the duke said to his father-in-law: " How 
do you use the royal liveries ? " "Whereupon the 
other descendant of kings replied : " How do you ? " 
One had the same right as the other. 

These offshoots of royalty claim all the distinction 
that their birth confers. The daughter of a ducal 
house prides herself on her likeness to her great 
ancestor, l^ell Grwynne, whose portrait hangs in her 
drawing-room, so that all who come can compare. 
You can pay her no higher compliment than to no- 
tice the resemblance which proves her royal origin. 



166 ARISTOCKACT IN ENGLAND. 

The royal favors have been extended even in 
recent times. Charles Greville sets forth with 
great minuteness the relations between George TV. 
and the Marchioness of Conyngham. One should 
be well up in genealogy to go about in London so- 
ciety ; and, though I had lived in England many 
years, I once came near tripping on this subject. 
Greville's revelations and recollections were the talk 
of the town, and when I went of a Sunday to call 
on a countess (now dead), who was fond of gossip, I 
asked if she had read the volumes. " Yes," she 
said, " but I must tell you at once. Lady Conyng- 
ham was my grandmother." 

The book was very generally disapproved by the 
relations of those whose imperfections it exposed, 
the Queen among the number; for Her Majesty's 
uncles were the principal offenders against morality, 
of their time. The editor defended his disclosures 
by referring to the " Life of the Prince Consort," 
which revealed the secret and domestic history of 
the Queen. But the stories there told were all 
favorable to the royal family ; Her Majesty, like the 
rest of the world, prefers to select for herself the 
point where she draws the line. It is true, she had 
no scandals to conceal in her own career; but 
I knew at least half a dozen grandchildren of 
William TV., none of whom were descended from 
Queen Adelaide. Yet they all had titles, or, as one 
of them said, " handles to their names." They also 



ILLEGITIMACY. 167 

inherited the peculiarity to which they owed their 
connection with the Crown. Divorces were com- 
mon in the family. 

Illegitimacy, however, in England is not confined 
to the descendants of royalty. The nobility emu- 
lates the example set by a long line of sovereigns. 
In the exalted circles of the aristocracy the bastards 
of peers go about bearing the family names, and 
daughters whose mothers are unrecognized marry 
into families as " good " as those on the paternal 
side. There are even instances of sons born before 
the marriage of their parents, whose younger broth- 
ers inherit titles to which the elders would have 
succeeded, but for the neglect of their mothers to 
go to church in time; the legitimate and illegit- 
imate children can claim precisely the same progen- 
itors. Some of these premature sons are to-day 
ministers at foreign courts, others have been masters 
of ceremonies in royal houses, while dukes and 
earls have been able to find places for the spawn of 
shame in the army, the Foreign Office, and even in 
that Church whose rites they had themselves neg- 
lected to observe. 

God knows the unfortunates are not to blame ; 
but to make their birth a distinction and an advan- 
tage is a greater enormity than the ofience to which 
they owe their origin. A Countess of Cardigan 
had once been the wife of Lord Cardigan's staff 
officer ; but she deserted her first husband for his 



168 ABISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

chief. A divorce ensued and a second marriage. 
A peeress not now living told nie this story at her 
own table, and not having studied the family tree 
of my hostess, I innocently inquired if Lady Cardi- 
gan had been received in society. Here one of my 
neighbors pui-posely interrupted the conversation,' 
and I perceived there was reason not to push my 
inquiries. After dinner I was told that the mother 
of my hostess had committed the fault of Lady Car- 
digan. The lady herself had spoken of her father, 
who was an earl, without a shade of reticence or 
embarrassment, and only some ignorant republican 
like me ever reminded her of the mother to whom 
that father was never married. 

The famous Lady Waldegrave was married to 
two brothers in turn : first, to Mr. Waldegrave, the 
natural son of the Earl of the same name, and after- 
ward to his brother, the legitimate heir, so that she 
was Mrs. Waldegrave and Countess Waldegrave 
successively. In this instance the father had pre- 
ferred the child of shame, and left the bastard the 
bulk of his property, which was unentailed; but 
the fortunate lady who married first the wealthy 
brother and then the titled one, secured both for- 
tune and rank without going out of the family. 
Her marriage with Lord Waldegrave would have 
been invalid, according to English law, which pro- 
hibits a marriage with a deceased husband's brother, 
but Mr. Waldegrave, being illegitimate, the son of 



ILLEGITIMACY. 169 

nobody, was also the brother of no one, in the eye 
of the law. Had there been, however, a son by the 
second marriage, and an earldom at stake, the next 
heir would undoubtedly have disputed the legit- 
imacy of the issue. But the question did not arise, 
and the violation of one law rendered possible the 
evasion of another. 

Some of the 'aristocracy exhibit a fidelity in these 
irregular relations not always displayed toward 
more respectable partners. A nobleman who died 
while I was in England was devoted to a woman 
whom he refused to marry. He was no longer 
young, but when his companion fell ill he nursed 
her with the tenderness of the fondest husband, and 
when his cares proved vain and she passed from his 
arms — ^let us hope, to a better life — his grief so over- 
whelmed him that he could not survive the loss. 
In six weeks he followed her to the tomb. This 
touching constancy is characteristic of the family, 
which has shown in several instances how love can 
rise superior, not only to considerations of rank and 
station, but to morality and public sentiment. Their 
devotion, however, has never necessitated the sacri- 
fice of position or precedence. During the present 
generation, they have filled important stations in 
diplomacy, secured the grants of successive peer- 
ages, and married into families even higher than 
their own — that is, when they married at all. 

It is not to be supposed that the aristocracy are 



170 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

without virtue. There are houses and circles as 
pure as those of the Queen ; but there is hardly a 
family in the peerage that has not, like the Queen's, 
its admitted illegitimate connections. There is 
probably no more immorality among the upper 
classes of England than in the corresponding caste 
in other countries, or possibly than in the wealthiest 
and most pretentious circles in our own. But there 
is this difference: in America acknowledged im- 
morality is a bar, while in England it detracts from 
neither rank nor station, and men and women have 
consideration not only in spite, but because of ille- 
gitimacy. In one country people are ennobled and 
received because they are bastards ; in the other the 
shame is hidden and the stigma concealed. 

An American woman, whose name is well known, 
was staying at Homburg with a duchess, who per- 
sisted in visiting the unmarried companion of a 
royal personage. The American was not suffi- 
ciently accustomed to aristocratic ways to consider 
the acquaintance an honor, and warned her ducal 
friend not to speak to that woman when they were 
together. Soon after this they passed the lady on 
the promenade, and the duchess could not bring 
herself to reject the recognition of a royal favorite ; 
whereupon the American, though she had her own 
weakness for rank and was fully impressed by caste, 
indignantly left the two Europeans to their own 
company, and walked home alone. 



ILLEGITIMACY. 171 

The influence of rank is unfavorable to virtue, 
because it not only shields vice, but actually exalts 
immorality. A fault is more venial in a duke than 
in a man of lower degree. A slip in a vroman of 
high position is easier overlooked and sooner for- 
gotten ; and there are peeresses to-day who have 
been divorced for cause and remarried, and who are 
received. This would not be if they were not mem- 
bers of the aristocracy. Even women who have 
lost their position in America, have regained it in 
England. One of these had a great success in the 
highest circles of London until finally her history 
became known. She then went in tears to one of 
the leaders of society and exclaimed : " You surely 
don't believe these horrible rumors about me ? " To 
which tlie countess replied : " My dear, if they were 
all true, I shouldn't think any the less of you." 

It is not true that the same thing occurs here in 
the same open way. Rank in England often en- 
ables its possessor to ignore or defy the shame that 
here would follow the sin ; but the stigma blazes 
boldly beneath a coronet. When the late Lord 
Chief Justice of England could take a woman 
whom he had not married on judicial tours to be 
received by provincial dignitaries, and respond to 
toasts as a bachelor while his grown-up daughters 
sat by his side, the state of society is certainly dif- 
ferent from that existing in America. And this 
difference is the direct result of aristocracy. A class 



172 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

is placed so high that it can make a social law for 
itself and defy the opinion of a world composed of 
inferiors. At least half a dozen peers of the realm 
have married women of public lives, and these 
women belong to the peerage. Their names must 
be set down in Burke. 



XVII. 
SERVANTS IN THE COUNTRY. 

I ONCE stayed at a famous castle, the master of 
which was very religious, and the servants came into 
chapel twice a day while he read family prayers. I 
recollect the long line of flunkeys in powder and 
knee-breeches prostrate around the earl as he prayed 
fervently that we might all be content with that 
state of life to which it had pleased God to call us. 
I had not been long in England then, and I thought 
that the prayer would be easier to grant in the case 
of the master than in that of the man. Later in 
my sojourn I should have known diiferent. The 
lackeys are not democrats. They are of Pope's 
philosophy and thoroughly convinced that " what- 
ever is, is right." 

Descended often from a long line of ancestral 
menials, reaching back sometimes like that of their 
betters to the time of the Conqueror, or sprung 
from the class of farmers or farm laborers, once vil- 
leins or serfs on the estates of the nobility, the 
spirit of servility is innate and ingrained. They 
firmly believe that the purpose of their creation 



174: ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

was to provide proper attendance for the aristocracy. 
" What would the gentry do if there were no serv- 
ants?" I have more than once heard them exclaim. 

Their duty in life begins early. A fortunate boy 
in the country is taken up to the great house as 
soon as he is able to trot about on errands ; he car- 
ries the bag to the post, or helps in the stables, or, 
if especially favored, is made steward's-room boy at 
once, and waits on the upper servants until he is 
promoted to livery. He is trained in all the eti- 
quette of the servants' hall, says "Sir" and 
" Ma'am," not only to those great dignitaries, the 
butler and housekeeper, but to the valets and 
ladies' maids as well ; and learns to speak with 
bated breath in the presence of the aristocrats them- 
selves. The girl's first function in life is to drop a 
courtesy when her betters pass her on the road, or 
to open the gate at the park lodge for the gentry to 
drive by. 

After a while they rise, the one to the post of 
footman, the other to that of housemaid or kitchen 
maid, and so on through the degrees, till the lucky 
ones arrive, perhaps, at the climax of back-stairs 
grandeur, and are housekeepers and butlers them- 
selves, always imbued with deference for their many 
and varied superiors, and always exacting the hom- 
age due themselves as they ascend. 

In a great house thirty or forty indoor servants is 
a common number, and often there are as many 



SERVANTS IN THE COUNTRY. 175 

more in the stables, and still as many others in the 
gardens, or the glass, as the conservatories are 
called. One nobleman that I knew was master of 
the hounds and kept seventy horses, and for every 
two horses a man. At an entertainment in the 
country — a sort of pageant or play — I heard some 
one say that a hundred of the servants came into 
the great hall and stood behind the guests ; the re- 
mainder were on duty elsewhere. Several times, in 
large establishments, I asked permission to visit the 
offices ; and the kitchens and still-rooms and scul- 
leries, the larders and laundries, the gun-rooms and 
plate-rooms and brushing-rooms, the housekeeper's 
room, the pantries, and the servants' hall, made a 
labyrinth of labor difficult to explore. In making 
the rounds I was taken to the nurseries and the 
school-rooms, for tutors and governesses are only a 
higher sort of servant in England. They live and 
eat apart from the gentry, and often get less wages 
than valets and ladies' maids. I saw, too, the bed- 
rooms and the linen-rooms and the rooms where 
the maids were making up clothes, all rising when 
their mistress entered. I visited the stables and 
the carpenter's shop, even the butchery and the 
brewery — for many of the large proprietors kill their 
own meat and brew their own beer. Each servant is 
allowed beer money as well as wages, or else sup- 
plied with so many glasses, or sometimes literally 
horns, of beer. 



176 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

Usually the servants of the aristocracy are allowed 
five meals a day. Their early breakfast is at seven, 
before the family has risen ; there is lunch for them 
at eleven, dinner at one o'clock, tea at five, and a 
supper at nine. At most of these meals meats are 
provided, and at two or three of them beer is 
served. The food is well cooked and savory ; they 
sit down to soup and pastry, to fruits and vege- 
tables in their season; and altogether a table is 
spread better than many of what is called the 
middle class can afford. Indeed, servants in En- 
gland can hardly be said to belong to the lower 
class — certainly not the retainers of the aristocracy. 
The attendance in the servants' hall is excellent, 
decorum is maintained, and the more punctilious 
perform among themselves many of the ceremonies 
they have watched from behind the chairs of the 
nobility. 

They have their privileges, and stickle for them 
as strenuously as the lords. A butler often gets a 
hundred pounds a year in wages, but his vails 
amount to at least a hundred more. Servants have 
been known to stipulate, when they were hired, for 
plenty of entertaining, so that they could count on 
their perquisites. At some houses, however, the 
attempt has been made to break up this inhospi- 
table tax upon guests. There are noblemen who 
increase the wages of their servants on condition 
that they accept nothing from visitors, though the 



SERVANTS m THE COUNTKY. 177 

same personages usually make handsome presents 
when they visit themselves. To people of limited 
means the consideration of servants' presents is a 
serious one, and makes visiting sometimes more ex- 
pensive than staying at home. But the custom is 
rooted, and the perquisite will not readily be aban- 
doned. The story is old of the gamekeeper who 
refused to receive a sovereign from his master's 
guest. He would take nothing less than paper, 
and the smallest bank-note in England is for five 
pounds. 

The cooks in large establishments have for one 
of their perquisites what are called the drippings, 
the remains of uncooked meat and game. One 
man of large fortune told me that, wishing to dis- 
tribute these fragments to his poorer tenants in the 
neighborhood, he offered his cook two hundred 
pounds a year for the privilege. But the successor 
of Yatel refused, and the aristocrat was helpless, 
unless he gave up a chef who had hardly an equal 
in England. 

In the presence of their masters the English ser- 
vants maintain a manner that may almost be said 
to be refined. It is quiet and subdued ; too obse- 
quious perhaps to suit the democratic idea, but 
otherwise unobjectionable. This manner, however, 
is something like the livery, put on for their supe- 
riors, and laid aside, I suspect, as soon as they are 
alone. 

12 



178 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

In many old families there still lingers among 
the retainers an attachment for those they serve, a 
fidelity and devotion that recall the feudal feeling, 
and which are returned by a protection and interest 
that make the tie a not unlovely one. I knew in- 
stances of friendship on both sides as sincere and 
loyal, if not as familiar, as ever exists among 
equals. 

I was staying once with a young nobleman who 
had a crowd of peers for guests. We had been 
dining some miles away, and drove back late at 
niorht in what is called an omnibus. The valet of 
one of the visitors, a lad of nineteen or twenty, stood 
on the steps without. By a jolt of the carriage this 
youth was thrown off into the road, while we were 
still some distance from the house, and the whole 
party alighted to look after him. He was unable to 
walk or to endure the motion of the carriage, and a 
couple of viscounts, an officer of the army, and a 
baronet carried the valet a quarter of a mile up a 
steep hill, then bore him into the room of the 
master of the house, and one tore open his shirt to 
look for his wound. There was no surgeon, so 
they bathed his breast and his forehead themselves, 
and the youth lay on the nobleman's bed till it was 
certain he was not seriously injured. 'Not till then 
did the gay young rollickers assemble below for 
their late carouse. 

I knew of another nobleman whose eldest son 



SERVANTS m THE COUNTRY. 179 

was standing for Parliament. The contest was 
keen, and the excitement in the family extended to 
the servants. Finally, the heir was elected, and 
the news was brought to the Earl and the Countess 
as they stood on the steps of the house in a crowd 
of friends and followers. The butler, a very re- 
spectable man of fifty or more, who had been in the 
family all his life, was unable to contain his delight. 
He rushed up to his mistress, threw his arms around 
her and kissed her, and the salute was forgiven by 
the lady as well as the lord. I did not witness this 
demonstration of fidelity, but I was told of it by an 
Englishman who was present, and pronounced it 
unusual, but not inexcusable. 

The Queen, it is well known, sets the pattern in 
this consideration for personal retainers. She not 
only visits her gillies in the Highlands, but the ser- 
vants on all her estates ; she attends their balls 
and christenings and funerals ; she invites them 
at times to entertainments at which she is present 
in person, an honor she never pays the nobility ; 
and her affection for her devoted John Brown she 
has been anxious to make known to the world. 

Twice I was present at country-houses, when the 
servants joined in a dance with the family. Once 
it was after a servant's wedding, which was, of 
course, an event. On the other occasion, at a well- 
known lodge in the Grampians, a Highland reel 
was proposed, but there were not ladies enough to 



180 AiJISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

go round, so the best-looking of the housemaids 
were brought in and placed in the line with mar- 
chionesses and the daughters of earls. One was by 
far the prettiest of her sex in the room, and the heir 
of the house didn't like it at all if any of his guests 
danced too often with this maid. But none of these 
young spinsters presumed on the favor that was 
shown them ; the distance in rank was too great to 
be bridged by any transient familiarity. It was 
the very consciousness of the gulf that made the 
condescension possible. 

At the house of a nobleman who had a crowd of 
sons, and these always a crowd of boyish visitors, the 
whole frolicsome party was sent off nightly after 
the ladies had retired, to a distant tower of the 
castle, where they might make as much noise as 
they pleased. They drank, and they smoked, and 
they played cards, and had two or three of the foot- 
men told off to them, who stayed up half the night 
with their young masters, to wait on them, and 
amuse them. The young men were all of the same 
age, and the gentlemen often invited the servants 
to a cigar or a glass, and not unseldom to a turn at 
the gloves, for most young Englishmen box. They 
played fair ; the lords and the lackeys wrestled to- 
gether on an equality. The servant might get his 
master down, if he could, and if the valet struck 
out from the shoulder, the gentleman took his pun- 
ishment like a man. Only when the lords went to 



SERVANTS IN THE COUNTRY. 181 

bed the lackeys had still an hour in the brushing- 
room, whitening the hunting-breeches of their 
masters for next day's field. 

In this same family there was once an attempt at 
private theatricals. The play was *' Box and Cox," 
and no one could be found for the landlady, till 
finally one lordling proposed his valet, a smooth- 
faced footman of nineteen. So William was dressed 
in woman's clothes and played Mrs. Bouncer with 
his master and another nobleman before all the 
quality. He was greatly applauded. But how it 
would have done to give him the part of a lord I 
don't know. I doubt if he could have divested 
himself sufficiently in that presence of his awe for 
his titled associates. Below stairs he might have 
assumed the role of an aristocrat and succeeded. 
I should like to have seen him attempt the grand 
air. 

The servants of the great, like the aristocracy 
themselves, must be amused. The necessity is 
recognized. There are houses where they have a 
billiard-room and a card-room. They ride to hounds 
behind their masters. They boat with their betters. 
I have seen a valet for coxswain and earls in the 
crew, and one lord is well known to have bon-owed 
from his man and never to have paid. There are 
often matches at cricket between the gentlemen and 
the servants, with the mistresses and maids look- 
ing on. 



182 ARISTOCRACY EST ENGLAND. 

Indeed, it is said that some ladies amuse them- 
selves with the low-born swains after a fashion not 
so innocent. I often heard the name of a duchess, 
not now living, connected with that of her groom 
of the chambers, and a countess who waited at 
Windsor was discovered caressing her footman in 
her own drawing-room. 

It is true rich men's daughters in America have 
fallen in love with their coachmen. Passion laughs 
at the barriers of position on both sides of the sea ; 
but here the lovers marry. In England, in most 
aristocratic eyes, marriage would inflict a still more 
indelible stain. It would affront the sentiment of 
caste. 



XVIII. 
SERVANTS IN TOWN. 

The servants, like the aristocracy, are seen to far 
less advantage in town. The entire establishment 
of a nobleman is seldom brought np to London, and 
footmen and housemaids are often hired for the 
season. These vicarious servitors, of course, have 
none of the devotion of permanent retainers, and 
pretend to little attachment for their masters, who 
hardly know them when they see them, the retinues 
are so enormous. I used to visit a duchess who got 
very indignant when only six footmen waited as 
she went to her carriage. " Where are all those 
men?" she would ask, as she looked around. '' But 
she is justly punished for her pride," said one of the 
family ; " since the duke died she has only four." 

The footmen are usually great strapping fellows, 
selected for their height and the size of their calves. 
A tall one fetches more than a short one, and many 
ladies are particular that they shall be good-looking. 
In great establishments there is one called "her 
ladyship's footman," for especial attendance on his 
mistress, and she naturally likes him to be present- 



184 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

able. The advertisements in the Times always 
mention if a man is more than six feet high, for 
every inch is worth at least a pound a year in his 
wages. They make a fine sight with their breeches 
and their buckles ; and powder refines the face, as 
ladies very well know. But they are an expensive 
luxury. There is a tax of a pound a year on every 
man-servant, and two pounds if he is in powder. 
Some of them are obliged to wear wigs, for the 
livery of certain noblemen requires it. I knew a 
family who always put their people into green wigs 
when they went to court ; it was the hereditary 
color for ceremony. 

State liveries, of course, are gi-ander than those 
for ordinary occasions; the lackeys have their court 
dresses like the lords. An unaccustomed eye might 
easily mistake the master for the man in the crowd 
of gorgeous frippery and uncovered legs about the 
palace door. Formerly there was a certain way to 
tell a gentleman : he never carried a bouquet. But 
the test is not unfailing : flowers have nearly gone 
out of fashion for footmen, as well as canes. Favors, 
however, are still worn at weddings, so huge that if 
the mode were attempted here, the unfortunate 
wearers would be taken for lunatics. But all this 
paraphernalia is familiar in London. In fashionable 
quarters you often see footmen walking the streets 
in powder and without their hats, so as not to dis- 
arrange their hair ; and nobody stares. 



SERVANTS IN TOWN. 185 

The lackeys themselves think livery no disgrace, 
but rather a distinction, a proof that they serve 
people of importance. The more conspicuous the 
garb, the brighter the yellow of the waistcoat or 
the scarlet of the cuffs, the larger the cockade or 
the longer the topcoat-tails, the finer a genuine 
flunkey feels. Besides which, they have two suits 
a year, and the sale of the cast-off clothes brings 
quite an addition to their revenues. They never con- 
descend to take up with the garments of their pred- 
ecessors, though one thrifty nobleman, who could 
not induce his footman to assist in his economies, is 
said to have had the lace ripped from the trousers 
and covered his own aristocratic shanks with the 
altered livery. But no servant who respected his 
class would submit to this humiliation. 

Footmen are principally for ornament. Dressed 
finer than their masters, fed often as well — for they 
drink up the heel-taps at dinner, and pilfer the 
pates and jellies, no doubt, as they take them down 
stairs — they lead a lazy life, sitting on cushioned 
carriages, or lounging in front of shops and palaces, 
with benches placed for them on the pavements 
while they wait. They are always conspicuous 
figures on the drive or at dinner, at the opera or 
a ball. People in society see as much of the ser- 
vants as of themselves, and the servants see all 
that their betters do, and mock and despise them 
while they bow and obey. 



186 AKISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

If a stranger to the customs and tlie language 
should suddenly be thrust into the entrance-room at 
a London ball, he might easily suppose that these 
lordly creatures, in their breeches of plush and hose 
of silk, with their silver buckles and powdered hair, 
their easy manners and constant bows, were the 
especial dignitaries of the occasion ; while without, 
the throng of fifty or a hundred flunkeys bringing 
up carriages or waiting to be called, watching the 
company coming and going, handing out the ladies, 
and taking orders from the gentlemen, make a part 
of the scene as actually as the plainer dressed aris- 
tocrats whom they serve. But it is a noisy mob 
in the street. They lose all their elegance on 
the pavement — crowding, chattering, pushing, in- 
sulting the gentlemen whom they do not know and 
criticising the ladies they do, incessantly shout- 
ing, " Lady Somebody's carriage," " Coming up," 
" Setting down," " Gone for the carriage," as 
often in mockery as in earnest, and altogether as in- 
solent and dangerous a rabble as can be seen any- 
where in the world. A parcel of scamps in a 
lockup suddenly left uncontrolled could hardly be 
vulgarer or ruder. They seem to revenge them- 
selves for the restraints they submit to all the rest 
of tlieir lives. Here the aristocrats are at their 
mercy. They must have their carriages and they 
can't get them themselves ; and the lackeys delight 
in annoying and disappointing and dela^dng them. 



SERVANTS IN TOWN. 187 

with only half the show of serving. One can fancy 
what the class might be capable of in a revolution. 
A night scene in front of a London ball makes one 
think of the pQissardes and petroleitses of Paris. 
The contrast with the sleek sycophancy within is 
terrible in its suggestiveness. 

After setting down their company, the carriages 
usually hurry off to a beer-house, where the foot- 
man may enter, but the coachman is supposed to 
remain on the box, and his beer and his pipe are 
brought out to him. But I have often seen the 
boxes empty in my strolls about London after mid- 
night. Early in the evening the fine people stay 
only a short while at each house ; there are usually 
four or five parties a night before the ball, and the 
servants have then little time for themselves. Still 
they often take their own friends for a drive in the 
ducal equipage, or hire it out for a fare, and keep 
their masters waiting half an hour in the hall of 
some great house, the footman at last excusing the 
delay with a lie only half believed. The carriages 
can be known by the arms and the liveries ; and the 
purlieus where they are seen, the crews with which 
they are crowded, tell their own tale. It is not the 
owners who are their sole occupants. 

After the company is fairly deposited at a ball, 
all is safe for an hour or two, and the liberty of the 
lackeys begins. The coachman and footman often 
get drunk together; quarrels and scuffles are 



188 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

common ; the police are called in ; liorses are some- 
times lamed and carriages smashed, but they usu- 
ally contrive to be ready to take tlieir company 
home, though sometimes at the risk of their lives. 

These gentry, who go to four or five parties a 
night, are allowed to lie late in the morning. It is 
daylight often and often before they turn in, and 
half of them breakfast just in time to wait on my 
lady for her shopping, or her visits in the after- 
noon. 

In town the question of perquisites comes up 
again ; not now, it is true, from vails or visitors ; 
only a raw American tips a footman or a butler at 
a dinner or a ball. But the tradesmen's bills are 
settled in London, and the servants have established 
a system of discount which contributes materially 
to their incomes, if it lessens those of their masters. 
A shilling in a pound is the ordinary toll ; I had a 
house in London and can speak by the card. In 
dividing this impost the rules are rigorously ob- 
served. The valet gets his discount on the tailor's 
and hatter's and bootmaker's bills; the cook on the 
butcher's and fishmonger's and green grocer's ; the 
butler on the wines ; he, too, has the empty bottles, 
so that you may not economize by retaining or re- 
turning them. The coachman is entitled to the 
perquisite on forage, as well as on the hire of car- 
riages and horses, and in London most people hire 
at least tlieir horses, leaving their own in the 



SERVANTS IN TOWN. 189 

country. I once bought a harness for a certain 
number of pounds, but my coachman went to the 
harness-maker and had the bill made out for 
guineas, so that he might secure the extra shilling 
'in the pound. The servant who betrayed this to 
me was considered false to his class. 

There is little use in struggling against the 
system. A duke with an enormous fortune at- 
tempted to stem the tide, but succumbed ignomin- 
iously. He hired a poor gentleman to supervise 
his bills, and paid them through him, but the ser- 
vants were in league with the tradesmen, and re- 
ceived their perquisites all the same; while his 
Grace was so badly served that the peace of his life 
was destroyed, and he was glad to capitulate with- 
out the honors of war. As a tradesman once said 
to an American Minister in my hearing : " Your 
Excellency must expect to pay for being your Ex- 
cellency." 

Another perquisite is the cast-off clothes. The 
valets and the ladies' maids are entitled to these, 
and are outraged if you make any contrary disposi- 
tion of them. I once gave a child about my house 
some old pocket-handkerchiefs, at which my valet 
protested ; and I heard the little one retort : " You 
get the shirts." They often look smarter than those 
they serve, wearing their wardrobes sometimes on 
finer figures. I have heard of ladies who sold their 
satins to their maids, though never of a gentleman 



190 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

who bargained in old clothes with his man. When 
lovely woman really stoops to anything unworthy, 
she can descend to a point that leaves our sex far 
behind. 

The servants have their clubs as well as their* 
masters ; there are two or three, I believe, for valets 
and butlers, besides others for those of lower de- 
gree, for the line must be drawn. The under but- 
ler, for instance, cleans the plate, and uses his 
thumb in the operation till it becomes unusually 
developed, and an under butler's thumb is often 
examined when he is hired ; like the calf of the 
footman, it is valuable according to size. Now, it 
can hardly be expected that a person thus marked 
should be admitted to the society of valets and 
grooms of the chamber, at least, until his thumb 
has been reduced to genteel proportions. 

But, after all, good servants take good care of 
good masters. Granting them what they consider 
their due, giving them the consideration and civil 
treatment which they often deserve, not interfering 
with their prejudices and perquisites, one can ex- 
tract a deal of satisfaction from the condition of life 
where such servants exist. They relieve one of 
many of the annoyances and petty cares that take 
up the time of householders elsewhere. If you find 
honest ones — and there are many — and if you can 
afford a certain outlay, there is no place in the 
world where servants contribute so much to the 



SERVANTS IN TOWN. 191 

comfort of existence as in England ; and if you 
make them friends they are faithful indeed. 

When I first lived in London I had a valet who 
watched over me with curious care. He had only 
served dukes and foreign ministers before me, and 
considered it a great feather in my cap to possess 
such a piece of paraphernalia as he. He supposed 
as an American I must be unused to the ways of 
the aristocracy, and he wanted to bring me on. At 
first he would remind me that we hadn't paid our 
visits since we dined at such a house, and he once 
ventured to remonstrate because I visited a person 
of the middle class. He said I had a very good 
connection, and it was a pity for me to visit below 
my station. His station in life depended upon 
mine, and it hurt his consequence to be the servant 
of a person who dined with any but the aristocracy. 
I once heard him say to a fellow servant that he 
had been in as good company as any duke or earl 
in England, only he stood behind the chairs. He 
was in his glory when I went to court, and I 
thought he would expire with satisfaction when I 
was invited to Windsor. 

The servants, indeed, are all apt to magnify the 
consequence of their masters in order to keep up 
their own. I was once driving in a park where 
only privileged persons can pass after a certain 
hour. I stayed too late, and my brougham was 
stopped by the lodge keeper. " Who goes there ? " 



192 AKISTOCRACT IN ENGLAND. 

But I heard my coacliman boldly reply, " Royals," 
intimating that a royal personage was within, and 
we drove by in state before I could rebuke his 
officiousness. 

However, I had my drawbacks as well. I once 
entered a gallery in the House of Commons reserved 
for diplomatists and peers, where, as Secretary of 
Legation, I had a right to a seat. But one of the 
attendants saw that I had not the foreign air; I 
looked homespun and British, I suppose ; and he 
knew all the nobility; so he tapped me on the 
shoulder, and said : " Come out of there ; you are 
not a peer." 



XIX. 

A NOBI.EMAN INDEED. 

Sometimes Americans attribute to an aristocracy 
both merits and graces that are not often centred in 
an individual ; nevertheless, there are members of 
the class whose nobleness is innate, and the memory 
of whose acquaintance it is a delight to recall. The 
picture of one, especially, will linger long with me. 

He was both an Irish and an English peer ; of 
illustrious lineage and almost the highest rank; 
middle-aged and unmarried when I first met him ; 
of enormous fortune and, of course, with troops of 
friends. His manner was the perfection of simplic- 
ity ; as natural as that of a peasant, as refined as 
that of a prince ought to be. It made me think of 
the exquisite clearness of water or of a diamond. 
There was no suggestion of manner at all. You 
saw straight through it to the man. 

The most definite consciousness of rank I ever 
discovered in him was his humility that he should 
be an hereditary peer. He often said to me he was a 
sorry legislator. He believed, indeed, that the peer- 
age was doomed, and, though he never admitted so 
13 



194 ARISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

much, I tliink lie believed it had no right to exist, 
that it ought to be swept awaj. But he was in no 
haste to bring out the broom, and very well content 
that the institution should last his time. Still, he 
voted with the Liberals on nearly every occasion — 
that is, when he voted at all, for he was often out 
of England years at a time. He was a picked 
man of countries ; had seen Japan and the United 
States, as well as every European court. 

In his youth, he visited with his tutor one of the 
little German principalities, where the British en- 
voy at once offered to present the social magnate at 
the petty court. The peer was willing, but he was 
very fond of his tutor, a man only a few years older 
than himself, and a person of great refinement. So 
the nobleman asked the minister to present his 
friend at the same time; but this the punctilious 
representative declared to be impossible; a tutor 
could not possibly go to court ; he would not even 
submit so preposterous a proposition to the palace 
functionaries. The young aristocrat, however, re- 
fused to be presented without his friend, and, though 
his name had been sent in, it was withdrawn, and 
the British Jonathan proceeded with his David to 
another dukedom where the chamberlains and the 
diplomatists did not disturb them. 

He perceived, nevertheless, the advantages of his 
nobility. We were together once, for a day or two, 
in Italy, and I recollect his telling me that he had 



A NOBLEMAN ENDEED. 195 

just left the party of a kinsinan, a man of enormous 
wealth and great position, who had twice refused a 
peerage ; but the peer declared he had himself re- 
ceived far more consideration in travelling than his 
relation who was not noble. The title counted with 
the couriers and Swiss innkeepers. He chuckled a 
little at the sycophancy, but it was in scorn. 

He had the softest, blandest manner, the gentlest 
smile I have ever seen in a man, combined with 
perfect self-possession and dignity of bearing. His 
courtesy was unfailing, and not confined to deport- 
ment; it was carried into deeds. He was inces- 
santly doing something to add to the comfort or hap- 
piness of others. I can recall a score of instances 
in which he considered mine ; and I cannot flatter 
myself that I was exceptional in his regard. Once 
he breakfasted with me to meet an American of 
good position, but who was often boorish in his be- 
havior. On this occasion the republican complained 
of the churlishness of the English, who, he said, 
never invited Americans to their clubs. He had 
been in London for a month and met a number of 
prominent Englishmen, no one of whom had shown 
him this civility. I blushed for the taste of my com- 
patriot, but before the party separated the English- 
man inquired of me the American's address, and 
the same day sent him an invitation to the most 
exclusive club in London. 

This liberal patrician was connected with half the 



196 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

nobility, and at one or two houses where I was for- 
tunate enough to be on intimate terras I sometimes 
met him when there were no other guests. He was 
then perfectly delightful. We spent hours together. 
He told me stories of all the great English people, 
initiated me into the secrets of family histories, 
sparing neither national foibles nor individual pecu- 
liarities ; for he was not insipid ; he was a shrewd 
observer, and not averse to satire, for all his amia- 
bility. He knew, or had known, every one worth 
knowing in the highest English society. He had 
never known any other, and, if there was a narrow- 
ness at all about him, it came from this restriction 
of his English field of vision. He could describe 
the career and the character of every Prime Minis- 
ter and ambassador for the last forty years. If he 
spoke of any people I had not met who he thought 
would interest me, he would either give me letters 
to them or more often write direct to them and ask 
them to invite me. Many a tour of visits he thus 
arranged, passing me on from one delightful house 
to another. 

I was always charmed to see him when I entered 
a strange house to dinner, or to sit near him, 
whether the hosts were old or new acquaintances. 
He looked out for my precedence ; always had me 
put up as high as he could, and near agreeable peo- 
ple ; asked me whom I wished to know, and pre- 
sented me with the most favorable introductions. 



A NOBLEMAN INDEED. 197 

though his endorsement was itself sufficient in any 
circle in England. 

His heart was warm as well as his urbanity de- 
lightful. When the great fire in Chicago occurred 
he sent me a letter enclosing his check for a hun- 
dred pounds, which he begged me to forward for 
the benefit of the sufferers; and shortly afterward en- 
closed a second check for fifty more, regretting that 
the Irish troubles had so reduced his income thab 
he was unable to contribute as freely as he desired. 
He said he had received too many kindnesses from 
Americans not to wish to do something when 
Americans were in distress. 

He had apparently no aptitude or ambition for 
public life, and had never been in politics. He 
hardly possessed first-rate ability, yet his ideas were 
often original, and his penetration was keen. He 
was well read and spoke several languages; his 
taste in art and his appreciation of nature were alike 
refined. His opportunities, of course, had been the 
best, and as far as storing his mind and cultivating 
his taste, he had made the best use of them ; but he 
had not turned his faculties to any graver account. 
He was a good master, a loyal friend, a refined and 
amiable associate ; bnt he made no effort to be or to 
do more. Perhaps he knew his own limitations, 
and at least he did no positive harm to any one. 
His life was spent in elegant ease and unobtrusive 
charities. Whether this was all that he should 



198 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

have achieved in so splendid a position his own 
conscience best could declare. Since he is not 
living, I may say that he always impressed me as 
feeling that he had not made sufficient use of his 
advantages. He seemed aware that, with such gifts 
of fortune and station, he ought to have accom- 
plished something more for his country or the world. 
But of how few cannot this be said in any country 
or in any class. 

When I first met this choice specimen of the 
manhood of any nation, aristocratic or republican, 
he had an income of sixty thousand pounds, and I 
was told by those who knew him well that bis kind- 
nesses and charities on his own estates bad made 
him the idol of his tenants ; but the crash in Irish 
fortunes came, and he suffered with the rest. His 
steward was shot, his own life was not safe on his 
own property, and he was an exile from the lands 
his fathers had held for generations. His income 
fell, I was told, to six or seven hundred pounds. 
And then bis nobility became conspicuous, for 
it was an attribute, not an appanage. When the 
drapery fell off the figure was seen to advantage. 
He made no complaint of the injustice of treating 
him as if he had been a harsh landlord and cruel mas- 
ter ; he did not intermit his efforts to do them good 
at whose hand he suffered. And this was not from 
pusillanimity. It was not weakness of opinion or 
consciousness of wrongdoing. His judgment w^as 



A NOBLEMAN INDEED. 199 

opposed to the course of the Irish party and to the 
policy of Mr. Gladstone at that epoch. He may 
have been warped by his interest or blinded by his 
partiality, but he took a more decided stand in 
politics than ever before ; he went to the House of 
Lords to vote in accordance with his convictions and 
against those with whom he had formerly acted ; 
but neither his misfortunes nor his opinions induced 
him to swerve in his treatment of his tenants, or 
affected his feeling for them, i^o unkind word for 
them escaped his lips when he discussed the situa- 
tion, which for him was so calamitous. On the 
contrary, I heard him excuse, if not defend them. 
The magnanimity of this forgiveness of injuries, 
which he at least had not provoked, was almost 
Christ-like. 

The moment of his disaster was most inopportune. 
He had married not long before a lady of lineage 
equal to his own, but the wealth he had offered her 
disappeared, and the coronet seemed a mockery 
without its appendages of state and fortune. One 
of their relatives told me they were living in lodg- 
ings in an unfashionable part of London, and kept 
no carriage; "and you know what that means," 
said the high-bom dame. " A doctor or a lawyer 
may set up a carriage or put it down, according as 

he prospers for the time; but for one of us " 

and she could not complete the sentence. 

Her noble kinsman did not take his reverses so 



200 AKISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

to heart. He offered his paternal acres and the 
mansion stocked with statuary for sale, and while 
waiting for the result took a modest little box near 
London, where he was good enough to ask me to be 
his guest. I was charmed to go, and of all the aris- 
tocratic residences I visited in England none so im- 
pressed me with the nobility of its master. I was 
received with the same courtly grace as if the man- 
sion had been a ducal one. There was no retinue 
of followers, no great service of plate ; a single man 
to wait, a table ungarnished with costly wines ; but 
no excuses were made ; there was no allusion to the 
change of circumstances or the lack of state. The 
ceremony was as punctilious, the conversation as 
brilliant and unconstrained, the grand air as ap- 
parent as ever. I was taken in a fly to visit earls, 
who evidently thought no less of their peer because 
of the diminution of his income ; and, democrat as 
I was, I could not but think that if birth and rank 
produced such results as this unconscious dignity 
and enchanting grace with which misfortune was — 
not borne, but ignored — not every consequence of 
aristocracy could be condemned. Only I insist that 
this — I wish I might call him friend — would have 
been just as much of a nobleman if he had been 
bom an American and a democrat. He was one of 
nature's aristocrats. 



XX. 

SPIRITUAL PEERS. 

The Church in England is a branch of the aris- 
tocracy. Bishops rank with viscounts and arch- 
bishops go before dukes. The first personage in 
the land, after the royal family, is "his Grace, the 
Right Honorable and Most Reverend, the Lord 
Archbishop of Canterbury, by divine Providence 
Primate of all England and Metropolitan." The 
other Bishops are not by " divine Providence," only 
by "divine permission." Bishops, too, are only 
right reverend, but an archbishop is most reverend. 
The heirs of the fishermen of Galilee are punctil- 
ious about their distinctions and their precedence. 

]N"evertheless, most of the prelates are low-born. 
They rise sometimes by dint of subserviency, some- 
times, it is true, by force of talent and learning ; 
but, on the whole, the worldlier arts count for more 
than intellectual traits, and I never heard that 
charity, humility, long sufifering, or the other Chris- 
tian graces were considered at all. These are virtues 
which the Prime Minister leaves to be their own 
reward. 



202 AEISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

For it is the Prime Minister who settles the suc- 
cession to the Apostles and determines on whom the 
Holy Spirit shall be invited to descend. He appoints 
every bishop and primate in the Establishment, and 
selects them from his own party as regularly as 
when he makes a judge or an ambassador. If, like 
Mr. Gladstone, he is a man with a religious turn of 
mind, he is, of course, more likely to choose from 
his own ecclesiastical clique ; but as most Premiers 
are not troubled with a strong religious bias, they 
care little whether the bishop is high church or low. 
The question with them is, first, whether he will 
support or oppose them in ordinary politics, and, 
next, whether he will make trouble in Church 
affairs. If they have no personal favorite to place 
and no political debts to pay, they look for a mod- 
erate man, who wiU not lean too strongly to either 
faction, but keep peace among the brethren. A 
mild and amiable person, without too much zeal, 
who will neither entangle the Premier in polemics 
nor inveigle him into crusades, is the sort of 
man most likely to be made Archbishop of Canter- 
bury. 

There is, however, a world of manoeuvring and 
back-stairs influence, female devices, royal intrigues, 
and all sorts of political and diplomatic chicanery 
at once set in motion whenever a bishop has been 
promoted to a better place or a better world. The 
vacant post is the object of ambition to half the 



SPIRITUAL PEERS. 203 

important clergy in the kingdom (and their wives), 
and one man, as human as the rest, is to decide. 

There are, of course, men of ability and learning 
on the episcopal bench, and there are none to-day 
who disgrace it by their lives ; but there are many 
who would never have been selected by Him who 
appointed the Apostles, nor by laity or clergy, if 
these had a voice in choosing their leaders. The 
brightest lights in the English Church are not in 
the golden candlesticks. .The Bishop of Exeter, 
like the late Bishop of Manchester, has adorned his 
place, though the appointment of each was bitterly 
opposed ; the Bishop of Gloucester is learned, and 
the Bishop of Peterborough eloquent, but both are 
partisans ; and Liddon, like Stanley and Milman, 
has remained unconsecrated, while a crowd of his 
inferiors received the mitre which he deserved. 

The Queen, it was said, repeatedly urged the 
elevation of Dean Stanley to the bishops' bench, 
but had not sufficient influence to carry her point. 
The story may not be true, for Gladstone certainly 
was Stanley's friend, and the Dean probably pre- 
ferred his independence and the life of London 
society, in which he was a brilliant figure, to the 
precedence and responsibility of episcopacy, and 
exile to the provinces for half of every year. More 
than once I heard him boast that as Dean of "West- 
minster he was subject to no diocesan. If it had 
been otherwise, he might perhaps have aspired to 



204 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

a see, for the deans often quarrel with their bishops, 
especially about the control of the cathedrals. There 
have been fierce fights over" the figures on the 
reredos and the ornaments in the choir. 

The story was also current at one time that the 
canon who gave up a Princess to Lord Lome was 
to be rewarded for his sacrifice with a bishopric, 
and many a diatribe was pointed with the taunt of 
so discreditable a bargain. This tale also may have 
been without foundation, but that the rumor should 
have been afloat at all shows that ecclesiastical 
preferment, like more mundane prizes, is believed 
to go by favor. 

A bishop often begins his career as tutor to a 
lord, who in due time presents him to a benefice ; 
or perhaps he has been master at a public school, 
where he made acquaintance with the parents of 
his aristocratic pupils. If, after a while, ambition 
stirs within him, he begins to write political 
pamphlets, or preaches political sermons, or makes 
himself in various ways acceptable to the dispensers 
of sees ; and finally, when a diocese falls vacant 
and his patron is in power, the adroit calculator 
and courtier is converted into a Father in God. 

Even then his struggles are not over, for there 
are degrees in the episcopacy. One see difiereth 
from another see in glory — and emolument. The 
pay of an ordinary bishop is only $25,000, while 
that of the Archbishop of Canterbury is $75,000 a 



SPIRITUAL PEERS. 205 

year. One bishopric has a seat in the House of 
Lords attached to it, another is without this distinc- 
tion ; and though every bishop is by courtesy styled 
My Lord, and none of them disclaim the title, only 
certain fortunate ones are- in reality peers of the 
realm. Of late years, in order to restrict the 
number of spiritual aristocrats, only two or three of 
the most important prelates are allowed permanent 
seats in the House of Lords ; all the others are 
obliged to take turn and turn about in being peers. 
This makes the lesser hierarchs strive earnestly for 
the prize that is set before them. They declaim 
eloquently in favor of the minister who can pro- 
mote them ; they preach and pray for him ; they 
vote for his measures when they have the chance ; 
they talk for him in society, and finally perhaps 
attain the goal of their ambition, that highest seat 
at feasts which their Master declared is not to be 
desired. 

But there is a drawback to their grandeur. The 
glory is very much like that of the monarch and 
the lords, a show and a sham after all. ]S"ot only 
because the mitres, like the coronets and the crown, 
are trembling on the heads of those that wear 
them ; not only because of the imminence of dises- 
tablishment and the certainty of approaching 
change ; but even while it lasts the glitter is tanta- 
lizing and unreal. 

The great prelate who crowns the sovereign and 



206 ARISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

performs the marriage and the burial service over 
the royal family, has few functions of higher impor- 
tance than these. In the union of Church and 
State the Church is subordinate, and the lesson is 
constantly inculcated. If the State endows and 
supports the Church, it must also govern and con- 
trol. Parliament determines the doctrines and 
regulates the rubrics of the Establishment. It 
settles not only what vestments shall be worn and 
if candles may be used, but whether there is a real 
presence in the Eucharist, and if baptismal re- 
generation shall be believed. A Parliament in- 
cluding Catholics and Jews and infidels legislates 
for the Protestant Church of England, creates and 
deposes its dignitaries, decides upon its rites, pro- 
nounces upon its creed ; and all the consecrated 
Fathers in God accept its decisions and conform to 
its commands, rather than lose their terrestrial ad- 
vantages. 

When this mighty fabric of time-serving and 
worldliness, called an Establishment, shall have 
passed away ; when the money-changers have been 
swept from the temple, and the example of the 
Founder of the Church is followed by the Church 
and in the Church ; these spiritual peers who now 
sit beside dukes and viscounts, and, for the sake of 
their dignities and their incomes, submit to the 
yoke of politicians in things spiritual and eternal ; 
who are told by Parliament what doctrines they 



SPIRITUAIi PEERS. 207 

shall preach to their flocks, in what belief they shall 
worship, with what form they shall approach the 
Holy Table in the most sacred right of their re- 
ligion, will be pronounced the veriest Esans that ever 
sold a celestial birthright for a mess of earthly pot- 
tage that the world has seen. 



XXI. 
THE POMPS AND VANITIES OF THE CHURCH. 

The style of the spiritual peers is in keeping 
with their rank. The residence of a bishop is 
called a palace, his seat in the cathedral is a throne. 
The principal servant of Him who had not where 
to lay his head has three mansions at his disposal — 
Lambeth Palace for a town house, and Addington 
Park and Stone House, Thanet, when he prefers to 
disport himself in the country. Every bishop keeps 
his chaplain to read prayers for him when his lord- 
ship is disinclined to perform this duty in person. 
The lower clergy address the members of the hier- 
archy with obsequious reverence ; they " My Lord " 
them and " Your Grace " them at every opportu- 
nity. For the prelates have a prodigious amount 
of spiritual patronage, livings in abundance to dis- 
pense to discreet inferiors. Though their pay has 
been cut down, it still equals that of any minister 
in the Government, to say nothing of palaces and 
sinecure benefices and other desirable perquisites. 

Their demeanor corresponds with their con- 
dition; there are no more pompous or inflated 



THE POMPS AND VANITIES OF THE CHURCH. 209 

personages in the peerage. Thej wear breeches 
and shovel hats in the street and aprons at dinner, 
and are as scrupnlous about the shape and the cut 
of their clothes as any courtier or Quaker going to 
a meeting or a levee. Thej are people of high 
fashion, too. Thej like the pleasures of the world 
as well as its dignities. The present Archbishop 
of York has been caricatured in the public prints 
as the " Archbishop of Society," and the late Bishop 
of Oxford was familiarly known in aristocratic 
circles as " Soapy Sam." An antagonist once re- 
ferred to his '' saponaceous " quality in the House 
of Lords, and the allusion was so irreverent and 
felicitous that society was shocked and tickled in 
almost equal degree. 

Bishops, as a matter of course, are conservative 
in politics. They must, in the nature of things, ap- 
prove the union of Church and State, and detest 
the Radicals, who advocate disestablishment. Many 
of them, it is true, have been appointed as Liberals. 
More sees of late years have happened to be in the 
gift of Liberal ministers than of Conservatives, and 
in the lists of the House of Lords you will find the 
bishops all classified according to their appoint- 
ment. But once in place they are like the decrepid 
Pope who threw away his crutches as soon as he 
was elected ; and the stanchest advocates of privi- 
lege and caste in England are the ministers of 
Him who declared the least among you shall be 
14 



210 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

the greatest, and that His kingdom is not of this 
world. 

Their votes can be counted on for every hoary 
abuse or vested wrong. Bishops have opposed 
every liberal measure ever introduced into Parlia- 
ment ; especially every ecclesiastical reform. They 
resisted Catholic emancipation, the removal of the 
disabilities of the Jews, the extension of university 
privileges to dissenters, and every approach to 
toleration, or to placing " the sects " on an equality 
with that Church of which they are the nobility. 
They fought bitterly against the disestablishment of 
the Irish Church, because they saw that it presaged 
and prepared the way for the deposition and de- 
thronement of their own. 

Their interference in politics is sometimes very 
positive. Not long ago during an agricultural agita- 
tion a bishop was addressing a meeting of farmers 
and laborers, and significantly recommended his 
hearers not to duck the agitators in the nearest 
horse-pond ; his advice was understood and appre- 
ciated. At the last elections the two primates of 
England, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, 
united in a political manifesto, adroitly inculcating 
the necessity of defending and maintaining the 
Establishment. They appeared only to enjoin cau- 
tion in the exercise of the franchise; but as the 
Tories proclaimed and the bishops believed that dis- 
establishment was at issue, the unprecedented archi- 



THE POMPS AND VAJ^ITIES OF THE CHUKCH. 211 

episcopal fulmination was as unmistakable as the 
episcopal allusion to a horse-pond. Yet all these 
right reverend and most reverend dignitaries would 
have denounced any resort to the Jesuitical methods 
of the disciples of Loyola. 

Usually the highest in the hierarchy are plebeian 
in origin, perhaps because at the start they thought 
more highly of others than themselves, and so could 
submit more easily to slights, be more subservient 
to power ; and, as preferment often depends upon 
subserviency, they have been more persistently pro- 
moted. But some are temporal peers in their own 
right, as well as lords spiritual, and some are the 
sons of peers. These are right honorable as well as 
right reverend. They do not lose their inherited 
rank because of any ecclesiastical honors they may 
acquire. For them the glory of the terrestrial and 
the glory of the celestial may be combined. 

From magnates such as these to colonial bishops 
is a long step downward, almost as great a descent 
as to an American Father-in-God. The colonial 
bishops are, it is true, right reverend, but they do 
not belong to the aristocracy ; they have no seats in 
the House of Lords, no palaces, hardly a chaplain. 
Nevertheless, they may wear the dress of their 
order, and the uninitiated often call them : '^ My 
Lord;" but they are not much invited in high 
society. They are Christians of the upper-middle 
class. 



212 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

The wives, alas! of even the highest clerical 
potentates are not peeresses. They are in sight of 
the promised land, but may never enter. I have 
often seen them marching unvs^illingly at the tail of 
the procession to dinner, and heard them express 
their indignation, sometimes in hardly Christian 
terms, that they should be excluded from the place 
and precedence accorded to their husbands. Their 
sufferings at such times are evidently acute. 

Queen Elizabeth once paid a visit to a certain 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who received Her Maj- 
esty in a manner becoming her station and his own. 
The monarch, however, disapproved the marriages 
of the clergy, and upon leaving Lambeth she ac- 
knowledged the hospitality of the archbishop's wife 
with royal arrogance : " Madam I will not call you ; 
Miss I may not ; but whatever you are, I thank 
you." The validity of the marriages of these ladies 
is no longer questioned, but their disagreeable posi- 
tion doubtless is a relic of the ancient uncertainty. 

Nevertheless the episcopal and archiepiscopal 
dames make the most of the positions they occupy. 
Many of them have not fully renounced the pomps 
and vanities of the world, despite their baptismal 
vows ; they like to throw open the episcopal saloons 
for balls and amateur theatricals, and Solomon in 
all his glory was not arrayed like some of these. 
Others strive by every social art to advance their 
own position and their husband's rank, though, as 



THE POMPS AND VANITIES OF THE CHURCH. 213 

often happens in other spheres, their ambition some- 
times exceeds their tact. I remember a bishop, who 
was universally supposed to have been egged on by 
his wife into utterances of a political character that 
damaged not only his spiritual usefulness, but his 
temporal prospects — they so overshot the mark. 
Another lady was believed to have inspired her son, 
who wanted the post of Chamberlain of London, a 
plebeian but very profitable place. The young man 
issued a circular setting forth his own qualifications, 
prominent among which he mentioned that he was 
the eldest son of a peer, and all society tittered at 
the eldest son of a peer who could never succeed 
his father. 

The pomp and circumstance that surround the 
English prelates once made a profound impression 
on some of their Episcopal brethren from America, 
who looked with admiring eyes on Lambeth and 
the bishops' bench in the House of Peers. Satirical 
Englishmen used to say that the consecrated repub- 
licans were sure to simper if they were called "My 
Lord," and some of them got breeches and aprons 
to wear to dinner. They said that being in Eng- 
land it was proper to dress as bishops in England 
do. By the same rule American army officers in 
England should wear the British uniform. I fear 
the right reverend fathers were anxious for once to 
feel like peers. 



XXII. 
CHURCH AND STATE. 

The Church of England is the church of the up- 
per classes. Whatever it does for the people it does 
as their superior. It is a part of the paternal sys- 
tem, and assists in governing the masses as a father 
governs his family. Perhaps one should rather say 
it is a relic of feudalism, and, like the army, is still 
officered exclusively by the gentry. Its advocates 
make their boast that the Church maintains a gen- 
tleman in every parish ; and no more potent engine 
exists to uphold and supplement the aristocracy. 
The parson and the squire, like the noble and the 
bishop, are on the same side. The Established 
Church inculcates submission and deference to what- 
ever else is established ; it instructs the people to 
order themselves lowly and reverently toward their 
betters, and to do their duty in that state of life to 
which it has pleased God to call them. 

The Church in England is " established " by law. 
It is founded, not on the principle of divine au- 
thority, like the Church of Rome, but on the de- 
crees and decisions of Parliaments and courts. Its 



CHURCH AND STATE. 215 

head is not the Yiear of Christ, but the Queen. It 
is not, like our Protestant sects of every denomina- 
tion in America, a voluntary association based on 
the consent of those who compose its communion ; 
it is imposed on the people of England by the aris- 
tocracy, of which it is a component part. Originally 
" established • ' by Henry Y III. because he wanted 
to shift his wives, it remained a monument and in- 
strument of royal authority until the lords usurped 
the place of the King in the English system, and 
then it adapted itself to the change and became the 
bulwark and appurtenance of the aristocracy, which 
it still remains. 

England is divided into 12,000 parishes, in every 
one of which there is a resident clergyman who re- 
ceives one-tenth of the income of the land. The 
ancient tithe in kind is commuted, but the clergy 
still obtain their tenth in residence, glebe, and com- 
muted tithe. Tliis is in addition to the revenues of 
the bishops and to the expenditure for the care of 
the church edifices. These 12,000 clergymen con- 
stitute one-fourth of the resident landowners of the 
kingdom. Their incomes average more than $1,500 
a year. They are landowners as absolutely as the 
peers ; for they also are tenants for life and cannot 
be dispossessed short of a revolution — unless in case 
of crime or gross immorality. They cannot, it is 
true, dispose of their estates by will ; but neither 
can one in ten of the larger landholders. From the 



216 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

Archbishop of Canterbury, with his $75,000 a year, 
down to the humblest incumbent of a parish, they 
are emphatically part of the landed interest. Nat- 
urally the Church is conservative. It believes, with 
Eob Roy, that 

'.' They should take who have the power, 
And they should keep who can." 

The power of appointing the clergy is itself a 
piece of property. It is commonly attached to the 
land. The incumbent of a living is usually ap- 
pointed by the squire or some neighboring noble- 
man, in whose family the privilege descends like 
any other inheritance. The greatest miscreant in 
life or infidel in belief may appoint the clergyman, 
if he owns the land. If a child inherits, the guard- 
ian sometimes exercises the right ; and, worse yet, 
the right may be sold. The succession to a wealthy 
piece of preferment is often disposed of years in ad- 
vance. You may read in the Times^ in this year 
of our Lord, advertisements of advowsons, as the 
right of patronage is called — the "cure of souls" 
for sale. Often the notice mentions that the in- 
cumbent is old, and the property is so much the 
more valuable, for the succession will be speedier. 
Then the advowson fetches a higher price. The 
Bishop of Peterborough has stated within the present 
year, that out of six thousand livings in private pat- 
ronage, two thousand are frequently in the market. 



CHrKCH AND STATE. 217 

The squire usually appoints his second son to 
the benefice. The eldest inherits the estate, and 
the next one takes the parish ; or, if there is no 
second son, some other member of the family gets 
an inning. But large proprietors, of course, have 
many livings in their gift, and thus the distribution 
extends beyond the immediate connection. Some- 
times the gentleman in every parish is the scape- 
grace of the family, compelled to enter the Church 
against his will, to earn his bread and butter in a 
genteel way. Many incumbents hold duplicate and 
sinecure benefices, and employ curates to do the 
work for a paltry stipend, while the real owners 
reap the lawful and larger income. Personal fit- 
ness has little or nothing to do with the appoint- 
ment, and the choice of the souls who are to be 
"cured" counts for nothing at all. They have 
no more to say about who shall be their spiritual 
pastor and doctor than the sheep of any other 
flock in selecting their shepherd, or their shepherd's 
dog. 

Even a Jew who owns the property may present 
the priest to a Christian church and the church 
is obliged to receive him. I knew a wealthy 
Jewish baronet who bought an old estate, and was 
not contented till he had secured the ad vow son, 
which had been sold away from the property. He 
chuckled over his purchase and his privilege. A 
Catholic, he said, could not present to a living; 



218 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

the laws prohibit that outrage on the Protestant 
Church ; but the preposterous supposition that a 
Jew could possess the prerogative had never been 
entertained. 

This squire bj purchase built a superb country- 
house overlooking his parish church, which, as often 
happens, stood within the park. You could see it 
from the windows and the porch. It stood close to 
the new stables. But the proprietor of the older 
faith was very liberal ; he often invited the parson 
to dinner, and the dependant was proud to sit at 
his master's table. The reverend gentleman was a 
fox-hunter, a card-playing parson ; one of a race not 
yet extinct, though the breed diminishes fast. I 
often saw him ride to hounds in " pink," and two or 
three times a week he played cards for money with 
his Jewish patron. He was not clever, nor learned, 
but by no means an uninteresting or unworthy 
man ; simply out of his place and time ; a survival ; 
like the State Church itself, a relic of customs that 
are nearly past. 

The squire's wife sometimes played the organ 
for the Christian service, and I was told presented 
vestments ; she even restored an effigy of that Lord 
whom her ancestors had crucified. This truly Cath- 
olic couple had crowds of Christian guests, who 
went to church in the park, and on Trinity Sunday 
prayed in the squire's own pew for " Jews, Turks, 
and other infidels." 



CHURCH AND STATE. 219 

The baronet and his wife were liberal in temporal 
things, as well as spiritual. One day the children 
of the village had a tea in the servants' hall, and I 
was permitted to attend the feast, for I was known 
to be curious about English customs. The mistress 
was present, and at a signal from the housekeeper 
one of the little ones said grace over the tea, end- 
ing the petition with " for Jesus' sake," and all the 
children bowed the head, at that name, in the 
Israelitish presence. 

I visited another house where the master was a 
Protestant earl, and he, too, had his religious 
chuckle, though for a different cause. He was the 
neighbor of a family far older than his own, though 
not ennobled. On the ancient estate there stood a 
church, built long before the Reformation. The 
house of the squire was so near that it had once 
been connected with the choir ; in fact, all had been 
one building. The bones of the family had been 
buried within the venerable walls, and, despite the 
Eeformation, you may still read " Ora pro nobis" 
on the brasses of the pavement ; but the Protestant 
service is said over them now. The family, how- 
ever, remained Catholic, and the presentation to the 
church that stands under the window of the son of 
its founder is in the gift of the Protestant earl six 
miles away. 

The Catholics have had their day. When the 
Marquis of Eipon became a Catholic some years 



220 ARISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

ago, he gave up the numerous livings in his gift, 
and his wife or his son has the presentation now, for 
a woman maj present to a living, though she may 
not sit in Parliament, nor, except in rare instances, 
inherit a peerage. The Catholic Dukes of Norfolk 
are the premier nobles of England, and have a 
chapel at Arundel, where they are buried in the 
church erected by their ancestors, but the mass 
must be said on the outside. 

Nevertheless the chancel wall is broken down for 
them. They are dukes if they are Catholics, and in 
England the privileges of the great extend within 
the House of God. Armorial bearings on the walls 
remind the spectator of the former importance 
of those who rot beneath, and the pews are some- 
times canopied, so that royal and noble sinners 
can pray with dignity. 

The pews in the parish churches are often pecu- 
liar. I once stayed at a house where you stepped 
out of a corridor into a large, square room, car- 
peted, with chairs and a table, and in cold weather 
there was fire in a grate. One side of this pew 
overlooked the chancel, so that the family could sit 
out of sight of the congregation and participate in 
the service, or not, as they pleased. If the preacher 
was prosy they left without being observed. In 
great things and small the Church of England 
consults the convenience and the consequence of 
those by whom and for whom the existence of 



CHURCH AND STATE. 221 

the Establishment is maintained. The church and 
the mansion, the palace and the cathedral, like 
the Church and the aristocracy, are part of one 
fabric, built into each other, so that one portion 
can hardly be removed without the whole edifice 
tumbling. 



XXIII. 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 

The influence of the Peers is not confined to 
their own chamber. It is through the House of 
Commons that the aristocracy has long exercised a 
great portion of its swaj. 

In the early part of the present century the lower 
House was at once dependent and corrupt. Nearly 
all its members were the direct nominees of the 
Lords, or were returned through their interest. For 
a member of Parliament may be returned without 
an election. He is nominated with the proper forms, 
and if there is no opposition, lie is declared returned 
without any voting whatever. Thus 70 members 
were returned by 35 places in England and Wales 
in which there were scarcely any electors at all ; 90 
members were returned by 46 places with less than 
40 electors each, and 37 members by 19 places 
having not more than 100 electors. In Scotland, in 
1823, when the population was 2,000,000, the total 
number of persons enjoying the franchise was less 
than 3,000. In 1831 the county of Argyll, with a 
population of 100,000, contained only 116 persons 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 223 

entitled to vote. Caitliness, with 30,000 inhabitants, 
had 11 voters. Edinburgh and Glasgow had each a 
constituency of 33 persons. 

In the county of Bute, which had 14,000 inhabit- 
ants, there was only one resident elector. This 
voter was once the only person present at an elec- 
tion besides the sheriff and the returning officer. 
He took the chair, constituted the meeting, called 
over the roll, and answered to his own name. He 
then moved and seconded his own nomination, put 
the question to vote, and was unanimously re- 
turned. 

In 1816, in England and Wales, 218 members of 
the House of Commons were returned by the influ- 
ence or nomination of 87 peers, 137 were returned 
by 90 commoners, and 16 by the Government, 
making 371 nominee members. Of the 45 members 
for Scotland, 31 were returned by 21 peers and the 
remainder by 14 commoners. Of the 100 Irish 
members, 51 were returned by 36 peers and 20 by 
19 commoners. Out of the 658 members of the 
House of Commons, 487 were returned by nomina- 
tion, and 171 only were representatives of inde- 
pendent constituencies. 

Seats were thus held in both Houses by heredi- 
tary right, and the control of the Peers over the 
constitution and proceedings of the Commons was 
direct and flagrant. The Duke of Norfolk was 
represented by 11 members, the Earl of Lonsdale 



224: ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

by 9, the Earl of Darlington by 7, the Duke of 
Kutland, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord 
Carrington each by 6 ; and the right of the patron 
to control the votes and the political conduct of his 
members was unquestioned. 

It was natural that under such circumstances 
seats should be sold as openly as estates. Nine 
thousand pounds were paid for the representation 
of one borough to its owner, and from £2,600 to 
£5,000 was an ordinary price. From the King 
down, all were engaged in the shameless traffic. 
The sale of seats was first restricted in 1809, but it 
continued by private arrangement until 1832, under 
the auspices of the Secretary of the Treasury him- 
self. 

The aristocracy that created and enforced this 
system is the same that exists to-day ; shorn of its 
authority, it is true, curtailed of its proportions, but 
unchanged in its instincts and aspirations, hanker- 
ing after its former prerogatives, fighting for every 
privilege, clutching after every fading relic of power. 

The various reform bills have lessened, but not 
abolished, the influence of the Lords over the House 
of Commons. The control of the popular assembly 
may be slipping from their grasp, but they have not 
yet let go their hold. As late as 1838 all but pro- 
prietors in land were excluded from seats in the 
lower chamber, and not until 1858 was every 
property qualification abandoned. There is still no 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 225 

salary allowed to members, a provision intended to 
restrict admission to the wealthier sort. Even since 
the extension of the franchise, the members elected 
from the working class . can be counted on the 
fingers. Sixty of the *' representatives of the peo- 
ple" in the last Parliament were sons of peers, 
more than half were of the. aristocratic caste, and 
one-fourth were titled. The "popular assembly" 
still remains in part one of the possessions and 
appurtenances of the aristocracy. 

There are few noblemen to-day who are unable to 
secure the return of their- eldest sons to the House 
of Commons. By many constituencies the heir is 
still elected as a matter of course. Sometimes two 
great families contest the seat for a county between 
them, as in Yorkshire, where the houses of Hare- 
wood and Fitzwilliam, within the memory of men 
now living, expended a hundred thousand pounds 
apiece in a struggle in which the eldest son of each 
was standing for Parliament. The Fitzwilliams 
succeeded, and, until 1870, no member of either 
family visited the other. It was my fortune to be 
present when, after all these years, a reconciliation 
was effected, and the Harewoods came to a dinner 
with the Fitzwilliams. 

The political influence of the Duke of Buccleugh 

was so great that in 1880 Mr. Gladstone thought fit 

to attack it in the Duke's own county, where the 

eldest son, the Marquis of Dalkeith, had always, as 

15 



226 ARISTOCRACY EST ENGLAND. 

a matter of course, been returned. Here Mr. Glad- 
stone proposed liiinself as a competitor. It was 
bearding the Douglas in bis hall. The struggle was 
fierce, and few more significant signs of the times 
have lately been observed than this presentation of 
himself by a Liberal leader in the stronghold of a, 
Tory family. That he should have succeeded was 
more portentous still. 

These eldest sons of peers and their younger 
brothers and cousins, of course, turn popular repre- 
sentation into a mockery. They can have no 
sympathies with a people rousing itself from the 
enthralment of centuries, while the other nominees 
of lords must serve their masters in order to retain 
their places. Mr. Disraeli entered Parliament as 
a Radical, but soon found it more profitable to play 
the part of a Tory. The Marquis of Salisbury, the 
late Prime Minister, the most arrant aristocrat and 
violent partisan of his order in the kingdom, the 
bitterest English enemy of democracy alive, was for 
years a member of the so-called popular chamber, a 
" representative of the people ! " and he has hosts 
of followers there to-day, sons of peers, heirs to duke- 
doms — even peers of Ireland — all ^' commoners," 
supposed to balance the influence of the lords. 

I have already told that when even the Liberals 
in Parliament were in want of a leader, they turned, 
not to a manufacturer, like Bright or Forster, a man 
of the people, but to the eldest son of a duke — the 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 227 

Marquis of Hartington. But the aristocrats wlio 
call themselves Liberals, the political descendants 
of the Whigs, cannot, in the nature of things, be 
very earnest for reform. Some are simply design- 
ing men who strive to lead the party which they 
fear openly to oppose, and hope to stem the tide by 
seeming to swim with the current. Others, like 
the Girondins of France in the first Revolution, un- 
doubtedly believe that moderate reform is advisable, 
or at least inevitable, and are willing to contribute 
to bring it about, thinking amelioration better than 
demolition, and alteration preferable to extirpation. 
But irreconcilable differences between the Liberals 
and the Radicals are constantly becoming apparent. 
Great peers, whose families have been Whig since 
the days of William and Mary, are found of late on 
the Conservative side. The Earls of Fortescue and 
Fitzwilliam have gone clean over. The Duke of 
Argyll is on the road, while men ennobled by the 
present Prime Minister deserted him as soon as 
they were seated in the House of Lords. 

A few sons of peers are liberal at heart, in spite 
of their position and surroundings, and if they had 
been born in different spheres, might have held dif- 
ferent politics. Many years ago I talked with one 
of these who was then the heir of a Tory minister. 
I had lately arrived from America, where I had 
been so placed as to see from the inside all the 
wild scramble for ofiice that occurs when a new 



228 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

President comes into power. I made some comment 
on this strife, comparing it with the condition of 
things in England. But the aristocrat rephed: 
"All this is sure eventually to happen here. 
Whatever you are we shall be." He did not seem 
to say it regretfully, and went on to speak of the 
way in which a man is fettered by circumstances. 
One cannot always be himself, he said, nor act for 
himself. Friends and position control him, and 
whether he will or no, he is swept on by the cur- 
rent in which he was bom. I often thought of this 
conversation afterward, when the commoner had 
become a peer and a member of a Tory cabinet 
more retroactive in its policy than any in which his 
father ever sat, and defended measures as different 
as possible from any ever suggested in America. 

The younger sons sometimes emancipate them- 
selves more completely. It is more natural that 
they should be liberal ; interest and anticipation do 
not trammel them so closely. There are brothers 
of earls who are almost radical, especially when the 
incumbents have many sons. But I can remember 
only one heir to a peerage whose love for the people 
overcame the instincts of his order, and he died 
before his fidelity could be tested by possession. 

Thus the House of Commons remains to a great 
extent under aristocratic influences. It is impos- 
sible that the sons and heirs of high noblemen and 
great landed proprietors should earnestly support 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 229 

measures looking to the overthrow of their class, 
the abolition of their privileges, and the eventual 
dissipation or confiscation of their estates. These 
will always be found openly or covertly working in 
favor of the nobility, whose interests are now inva- 
riably opposed to those of the masses ; while in any 
great political emergency the influence of the peers 
is brought to bear with prodigious force on the ple- 
beian members of the House of Commons. The 
most potent engine then is always the social one. 
Invitations to great houses are lavished upon irres- 
olute adversaries ; peeresses leave cards on the 
wives of timid or aspiring members, and fashion 
opens its most exclusive doors to those whose votes 
are still, as in other days, for sale. There have 
been instances of men who held out long against 
every temptation of place or power, but finally suc- 
cumbed to the blandishments of Tory duchesses. 
Society is conservative in London, and the path to 
Hatfield House, like the floor of another place not 
so desirable to visit, is paved with Liberal inten- 
tions and Kadical promises. 

Mr. Gladstone once declared that the love of an 
Englishman for freedom is hardly stronger than his 
love for aristocracy, and Sir William Molesworth, 
one of the most astute of recent political philoso- 
phers, asserts that this feeling in England has the 
force of a religion. But the god is a fetich. 



XXIV. 
THE LAND. 

The landed property of England covers 72,000,000 
acres. It is worth ten thousand millions of dollars, 
and yields an annual rent, independent of mines, 
of three hundred and thirty millions. One-fourth 
of this territory, exclusive of that held by the own- 
ers of less than an acre, is in the hands of 1,200 
proprietors, and a second fourth is owned by 6,200 
others ; so that half of the entire country is held by 
7,400 individuals. The population is 34,000,000. 
The peers, not six hundred in number, own more than 
one-fifth of the kingdom ; they possess 14,000,000 
acres of land, worth two thousand millions of dol- 
lars, with an annual rental of $66,000,000. 

[N'ext to Belgium, England is the most thickly 
populated country in the world, but the Duke of 
Devonshire has one estate of 83,000 acres and an- 
other of 11,000 ; the Duke of Bedford one of 33,000; 
the Duke of Portland owns 53,000 acres, the Duke of 
Northumberland 181,000, and in every county there 
are properties ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 acres 
in the possession of the lords. Seven persons own 



THE LAND. 231 

one-seventh of Buckinghamshire, which has a pop- 
ulation of 175,000 and an_ae?eage of 450,000. 
Cambridge has a population of 149,000, and Rve 
persons own one-ninth of the land and receive one- 
thirteenth of the rental. In Cheshire the popula- 
tion is 561,000, and sixteen persons own two-sev- 
enths of the land, which is 602,000 acres in extent. 
In Ireland the situation is similar. In the prov- 
ince of Munster eleven persons own one-eleventh of 
the land. In Ulster, a noble marquis, the grandson 
of George lY.'s mistress, owns 122,300 acres; the 
natural son of another marquis, who was probably 
the worst Englishman that ever lived, owns 58,000, 
and still another marquis, married to a woman of the 
town now living, owns 34,000. In Connaught two 
persons own 274,000 acres, and besides these Yis- 
connt Dillon holds 83,000 and the Earl of Lucan 
60,000. Lord Fitzwilliam has an estate of 89,000 
acres, the Duke of Leinster one of 67,000, Lord Ken- 
mare one of 91,000 and another of 22,000, Lord Ban- 
try one of 69,000, Lord Landsdowne one of 91,000, 
another of 13,000, and another of 9,000; Lord 
Downshire one of 26,000, one of 15,000, and another 
of 64,000 ; Lord Leitrim three of 54,000, 22,000, and 
18,000 respectively. The Duke of Devonshire, in 
addition to his enormous English properties, has one 
Irish estate of 32,000 acres and another of 27,000. 
His eldest son is the Marquis of Hartington, recently 
the leader of the Liberal party in England, but his 



232 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

lordship was unable to follow Mr. Gladstone in his 
endeavors to bring peace and prosperity to Ireland. 
Like the young man in Scripture, he went away 
sorrowing, " for he had great possessions." 

Scotland, however, is the paradise of the peers. 
The county of Sutherland contains 1,299,253 acres, 
of which the Duke of Sutherland owns 1,176,343. 
The population of the county is 24,317 souls. Six 
other potentates hold over 100,000 acres among 
them, leaving exactly 5,295 acres for the remain- 
ing 24,310 inhabitants. There, are, however, only 
85 of these with more than an acre apiece. 

Among the other great proprietors in Scotland are 
the Duchess of Sutherland, who owns an estate of 
149,000 acres in her own right, and the Earl of 
Fife, who has one of 140,000, another of 72,000, 
and another of 40,000. The Duke of Richmond 
has one of 155,000 and another of 69,000 ; the Earl 
of Seafield (the head of the Grants), one of 96,000, 
one of 48,000, and one of 16,000 ; the Earl of Bread- 
albane owns 193,000 and 179,000 acres ; the Duke 
of Hamilton, 102,000 and 45,000; the Duke of 
Buccleugh, 253,000, 104,000, and 60,000. The 
Duke of Argyll is comparatively poor; he owns 
only 168,000 acres, while the Queen's estate of Bal- 
moral is a modest little property of 25,000 acres. In 
Inverness-shire twenty men own 2,000,000 acres 
among them, and in Aberdeenshire twenty-three 
" lords and gentlemen " own more than half the 



THE LAlfD. 233 

county, thongh the population is 244,000. The 
greater part of all this territory is devoted to the 
sports of the aristocracy, for whom Scotland is only 
one great playground. 

Three-fourths of these noble landlords inherit 
their estates either from grasping robbers of the 
Norman type or Cromwellian conquest, or from 
women who sold their beauty and their virtue to 
kings or panders, or from politicians of the stamp 
of Aaron Burr or Alderman Jaehne. Walpole and 
Pitt were the most lavish distributors of coronets 
England ever had, and one of these notoriously 
bought with money and titles the very Irish Union 
which is certain soon to be dissolved, while the 
other was the author of the famous maxim in Eng- 
lish politics, ^' Every man has his price." 

The great landowners themselves seldom culti- 
vate more than a little piece of soil, sufficient for 
the requirements of a single establishment. The 
arable and pasture land of the kingdom is let out to 
1,160,000 tenant farmers, 70 per cent, of whom hold 
less than 60 acres each, 12 per cent, between 50 and 
100 acres, and only 18 per cent, more than 100 
acres apiece. In all the kingdom only 600 farms| 
exceed 1,000 acres in extent. Many of the farmers' 
are little better off than their own laborers, but in the 
aggregate they employ a capital of $2,000,000,000. 
With the laborers they constitute one-tenth of the 
working population of the country. 



234 ARISTOCRACY m ENGLAND. 

The laborers have no capital but the furniture of 
their dwellings, unless the strength of their bodies 
and the hard experience of toil maj be considered 
capital. Their wages are insufficient to maintain 
them, and the consequence is there are a million of 
paupers to be supported by the State. They have, 
of course, no independence, and are in reality serfs 
of the soil. They rarely leave the parish in which 
they were born; until recently, if they did so they 
forfeited the right to relief when destitute, or to the 
almshouse, which every peasant looks to as the end 
of his laborious life. They never save ; they have 
insufficient food ; in many parts of the country their 
stature is dwarfish, their gait slow and sluggish, like 
their minds. They have no education ; their only 
pleasure is drink. Above all, they have no possi- 
bility of bettering themselves. But it is upon their 
poverty, degradation, and misery that the grandeur 
and luxury of the aristocracy are founded. One is 
the direct cause of the other. 

In 1880 the average wages of the agricultural 
laborer, the man who worked the two thousand 
million acres of land and produced the three hun- 
dred and thirty millions of revenue, was fourteen 
English shillings a week, or about fifty cents a day. 
Out of this he had to pay his rent to the earl or the 
duke, which was two English shillings, or fifty 
cents, a week. Bread was three cents a pound, 
meat eighteen cents, and butter one shilling and 



THE LAND. 235 

eight pence, about forty cents. So his fifty cents a 
day would not buy many pounds of meat or butter, 
if the family was large. For there were shoes to be 
got for all, clothes, fuel, lights, as well as food, all 
out of fourteen shillings a week, and in sight of the 
castle of my lord, who was rich solely because the 
hind was poor. 

The ordinary cottage of the English laborer has 
but two rooms, and when the married man has a 
family of nearly or quite grown sons and daughters 
they often all sleep in one room, and not unfre- 
quently in the same bed. The great majority of 
cottages are wretchedly built, often on very un- 
healthy sites, miserably small, very low, badly 
drained, and they scarcely ever have a cellar or a 
space under the roof above the room on the lower 
floor. They are fit abodes for a peasantry pauper- 
ized and demoralized by the utter helplessness of 
their condition. 

The first summer that I spent in England I 
visited two splendid mansions in the south whose 
owners were earls. One of these showed me a hall 
in his castle that was restored in the time of Henry 
Y., and the other was of the family of that Count 
Robert of Paris who sat for an hour on the throne of 
Constantinople. Both of these nobles were person- 
ally estimable, and even religious men, who un- 
doubtedly supposed they were doing their duty in 
that state of life to which it had pleased God to call 



236 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

them. I knew of exalted and beautiful traits in the 
character of each that would extort the admiration 
of honorable men everywhere. 

While I was visiting them, I attended the meet- 
ings of the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science, held in a neighboring town. Large 
parties went in each day from the palatial and 
luxurious abodes of the nobility, to be present at 
the sessions, at which an earl presided ; and nearly 
a score of high-placed proprietors attended what 
interested me most of all, the sittings of the Depart- 
ment of Political and Social Economy. The mag- 
nates were engaged for several days discussing the 
condition of the English poor. I heard viscounts 
and baronets and bishops and earls lamenting the 
misery and depravity, the poverty and low wages 
of the wretches who lived on their estates. I heard 
them admit that in their part of the country a 
shilling a day was often the wages of a strong, 
healthy man, who had a wife and six or seven chil- 
dren to support, out of which, I heard them say, at 
least a shilling a week was deducted for rent. I 
heard that whole families occupied a single bed- 
room. I heard of the ignorance and stolidity, often 
the brutality, of the English peasants, of whom 
there are several millions. 

l^ot all are in this extreme condition, but all are 
degraded and demoralized ; and I have heard Eng- 
lish noblemen declare that, as a class, they are more 



THE LAND. 23T 

brutish — that was the word — than anj other peas- 
aotry in the world. The worst things I have told 
are neither exceptional nor rare. I went back to 
the stately halls, where forty or fifty guests were 
feasted each night off of silver, and where the very 
servants were ten times better fed and clad and 
lioused than the best off of the lower class outside ; 
where the poor crowded around the charitable 
kitchen gate, literally glad to feed on the crumbs 
that fell from the rich man's table ; and I wondered 
what would be the end— and how long it would be 
deferred — of the aristocracy of England. 



XXV. 
ENTAIL. 

The land of England does not belong to the land- 
lords. An enormous proportion of it is entailed, 
and the so-called proprietors are in reality only ten- 
ants for life, without the power of selling, or of de- 
termining who their successors or heirs shall be. 
Many estates are also burdened with settlements, 
jointures to Avidows, or sometimes provisions for 
younger children ; or mortgaged for the debts of 
long-deceased owners. I recollect an earl who had 
to pay out of his nominal income the jointures of 
three countesses, the widows of his predecessors. 
The reigning countess told me she could not afford 
a house in London till the last of these ladies died ; 
but they were long-lived, and kept up their estab- 
lishments near Grosvenor Square while she was 
forced to remain in the country, or live for only a 
month or two of the season at an hotel in town. 

I knew another nobleman, whose father and 
uncle had so encumbered a splendid property that 
proceedings were taken to satisfy the creditors. It 
was impossible to sell, or to disturb the rights of 



ENTAIL. 239 

the heir ; so the estates were placed in the hands of 
trustees, who managed them for the benefit of all 
concerned. A certain allowance was made to the 
nominal possessor and his eldest son, who made out 
the best they could with their stipend ; but on the 
death of the earl the new man came unencumbered 
into possession of 90,000 pounds a year, with no 
obligation to pay the debts of his father. As 
the creditors were aware of this contingency when 
they advanced the money, they only suffered a 
loss the possibility of which they had voluntarily 
incurred. 

Entail is a deliberate invention of the aristocracy 
to preserve the land in the hands of the few, at the 
expense not only of the other members of great fam- 
ilies, but of the community at large and its individ- 
ual members. If it is impossible to sell, it is, of 
course, impossible to buy, and rich men desirous of 
becoming "landed gentry" have often been for 
years unable to enter the territorial aristocracy. 
The importance of those who are called " the great " 
in England depends in a large degree on the pos- 
session of land. The wealthiest tradesmen, mer- 
chants, bankers, brewers, find their consequence 
incomplete until they can purchase estates and 
rank with the county families. To keep these new- 
people out is one of the objects of the system of 
entail. 

IN'evertheless, of late years, they contrive to find 



240 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

their way within the exalted company ; and then 
immediately proceed to entail their newly acquired 
possessions. I knew a rich Jewish gentleman, the 
son of a banker, whose father left half a million 
pounds to be invested in the purchase of an estate, 
and half a million more to build a house. The son 
complied religiously with his father's injunction, 
and bought a property that had been in a single 
family seven hundred years ; he put one of the cost- 
liest mansions in England on the site of the Cru- 
sader's manor-house; and the entail of these modern 
Jewish gentry was so strict that napkins and towels 
had to be replaced, whenever worn out, by the 
tenant for life, that the establishment might descend 
to the successor in undiminished splendor. But 
the son died childless, and the estate went to his 
nephew, who had seven daughters and no male heir. 
The line so carefully provided for is likely to be- 
come extinct, and the property scattered among 
females who will carry it into other families. 

Half a million pounds, however, were left to a 
married sister, who herself instantly " made an eld- 
est son," as the English say ; that is, she entailed 
the bulk of her fortune on one child, although she 
had four. But the irony of fate pursued the family, 
and this eldest son died unmarried before his mother. 
A younger and delicate boy is the only male rep- 
resentative in the coming generation, and he cannot 
succeed to the name, being in the female line. 



ENTAIL. 241 

In spite of patrician precautions, the vicissitudes 
of fortune continue. I was once taken to a stately 
mansion in Cheshire, whose ancient timbers pro- 
claimed the gentility of the master, for they had 
been laid in the times of the Henrys. The story 
that was told me in this venerable structure was 
piteous to aristocratic ears ; but let democrats deter- 
mine. The present proprietor had no sons by his 
first wife, and at her death he settled the property 
absolutely on two infant daughters, intending sol- 
emnly never to marry again. But, alas for human 
constancy ! long before the daughters were grown 
he had another wife and a son. But the entail was 
irrevocable. One daughter was dead and the sister 
inherited all, and the anomaly, hateful in English 
eyes, is presented, of a son bearing an ancient and 
honorable name — ^but penniless, while his sister in- 
herits the family seat, the heirlooms, and the jewels. 
The son absolutely goes out into the world like an 
adventurer to earn his bread ; and all good aristo- 
crats lament the hardship which gives to a daughter 
the property that in every other case would descend 
to the son, and leaves to him that poverty which, 
according to English rule, should be reserved for 
daughters alone. 

The famous Holland House was entailed as long 
as possible, but at last there was no one to entail it 
to. The last Lord Holland left no son, nor legiti- 
mate daughter, not even a collateral heir to his title 
16 



242 AKISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

or estates, and the grand old mansion where Addi- 
son wrote and Charles James Fox was a brother's 
guest, where the symposia were held that Macaulay 
described, and where, even in the present decade, 
the royalty and aristocracy of England are annually 
received at the most brilliant out-door parties of the 
century — Holland House is the absolute property 
of Lady Holland, herself no born owner of the 
name, no daughter of the family, but a stranger 
whose title comes by marriage. This peeress is 
poor for a noblewoman, and has bargained v/ith a 
distant and wealthy connection of the family, the 
Earl of Ilchester, a Fox-Strangways by name — to 
leave him Holland House in her will, on condition 
that he pays her during her life £7,000 a year. By 
this ignoble huckstering in an illustrious family, the 
time-honored structure is still preserved to the 
blood and name of those who made it historical — 
a shabby substitute for entail. 

The entail and the settlements reduce the nominal 
income of a tenant for life, sometimes by half. They 
affect not only his power of disposing of the prop- 
erty, but his ability to improve it ; for this tying up 
of land often prevents the so-called owner from 
raising money to drain, or plant, or build. There 
are proprietors who cannot cut down a tree without 
the consent of the heir. Many are entirely unable 
to develop the resources of their land, to improve 
the cottages of their peasants, to stock the farms for 



ENTAIL. 243 

the tenantry — solely because of the entail. Thou- 
sands of landlords would be enriched to-day if their 
estates could be broken up and sold. Their debts 
could be paid, the property vastly improved, the 
whole country benefited ; but all this is prohibited 
in order to continue the existence of a privileged 
class who cannot, if they would, get rid of their 
property, even to increase their fortunes. Entail is 
the incubus that rests on all — owner, farmer, and 
laborer. 

The importance of keeping consequence and 
power in the hands of a few, is so much considered 
that even if an estate is not entailed by will or set- 
tlement, the law steps in to enforce the sacred prin- 
ciple of primogeniture, and whenever a man dies 
without a will the eldest son inherits all the land. 
More even than this : in order to limit the ownership 
of the soil every impediment is placed by the State 
in the way of transfer. The formalities on the sale 
of land are numerous and intricate and obligatory, 
and purposely contrived to complicate and obstruct 
a change of owners. The legal fees are enormous, 
and one of the most difficult things to do in all 
England is to purchase landed property. The con- 
sequence is that even if poor people accumulate 
enough for the purchase money, they are frightened 
from the attempt by the charges and difficulties ; and 
the possession of land becomes one of the greatest 
of luxuries. Then too the income is small ; two 



244 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

per cent, is a high rate of interest on land, and 
only the rich can afford to invest their money in 
this way. 

The tendency, therefore, is steadily to the disap- 
pearance of small estates and the accretion of larger 
ones. The poor man's acre is swallowed up in his 
rich neighbor's domain. The class of yeomen, or 
small farmers owning their own properties, has al- 
most vanished. The tenant farmers have replaced 
them, holding their acres by a yearly lease depend- 
ent on the good will of the master for a renewal. 
This is the tenure of a large proportion of the farm 
land of England to-day. 

And this system is not only the result of circum- 
stances, the consequence of past events now uncon- 
trollable or irreversible ; it is the object and aim of 
present legislation and politics. Some years ago 
the condition of the landlords in consequence of en- 
tail was so disastrous, that the State was compelled 
to intervene, but instead of breaking up the entail 
or facilitating in any way a change of ownership or 
the sale of land, the expedient resorted to was of 
quite another sort. The Government lent to the 
landlords, making the debt a charge on the land. A 
Parliament, composed to a large extent of landlords, 
voted to lend themselves money at easy rates in 
order to improve their lands, but refused to do any- 
thing to render the sale easy, or in most cases pos- 
sible. 



ENTAIL. 245 

The State — or the class that has liitherto con- 
trolled the State — is determined to maintain the 
aristocracy ; and nothing renders the aristocracy so 
secure as the system of entail. Abolish this, and 
the whole edifice tumbles. It is the underpinning 
and the foundation stone. 



XXVI. 
SPORT. 

One-third of the soil of England is devoted to 
the pleasures of the aristocracy, the principal of 
which is sport. The story is old of the foreigner 
who stayed at a country-house where every morn- 
ing the men of the party exclaimed : " 'Tis a fine 
day! Let's go out and kill something." The 
picture is not exaggerated. Many Englishmen of 
fortune seem to suppose they are sent into this 
world to hunt foxes and shoot grouse and deer. 
This is the object of their existence and the occupa- 
tion of their lives. Among the aristocracy the man 
who does not shoot is an anomaly, almost a mon- 
strosity. There must be something wrong about 
him. 

All the arrangements of the upper classes — politi- 
cal or social, in town or country — are made with 
reference to sport. The fashionable season and the 
parliamentary season are determined by the game 
laws; country-house parties in winter and tours to 
tlie Continent in summer depend upon what are 
called *' close times." Courtships are carried on, 



SPORT. 247 

marriages are postponed, to suit the convenience of 
sportsmen. Great political revolutions are precipi- 
tated or deferred, questions of peace or war are 
taken up or let alone because ministers want to 
go to Scotland, because grouse-shooting begins in 
August, and fox-hunting is not over till February. 
The gravest crises in the history of a government 
are neglected when legislators are anxious to be off 
to the moors, and the sessions of Parliament can- 
not be held till the frost is out of the ground and 
the foxes begin to breed. 

Estates are purchased and houses built because of 
the proximity of the covers ; properties are valuable 
or insignificant according to the amount of game. 
Scores of fortunes are lost through the excessive 
love of sport. Every circumstance and event of 
English high-life revolves around this pivot, and the 
results are as visible as those of religion. Sport 
enters into politics, it colors literature, it controls 
society. It affects dress, manners, etiquettes, and 
entertainments, the relations of master and ser- 
vant, man and wife, father and son; the char- 
acteristics of whole classes in the State- It is one 
of the principal causes and results of aristocracy 
to-day. 

On the 12th of August the sportsman's year 
begins. Grouse-shooting dissolves Parliament, and 
all who have moors, or invitations to them, make 
haste to the north. There is some good shooting 



248 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

in the south, but the best grouse-moors are in the 
opposite direction. Parties of twelve or twenty are 
common, but the genuine sportsmen often go oif in 
smaller numbers. In Scotland there are hundreds 
of small shootings let for the season at prices vary- 
ing from forty pounds to four thousand, according 
to the extent and quality of the game ; but the 
great proprietors of course reserve the best for them- 
selves. On many estates there are small shooting- 
boxes, or still simpler cabins called shielings, plainly 
furnished, where half a dozen men can go without 
ladies, and devote a few days or weeks to their 
favorite pastime. 

More often, however, society is combined with 
sport. At a great House the party is usually large. 
The men sally out each morning " to kill some- 
thing," and sometimes the ladies accompany them. 
Of late years a few of these are shooters themselves. 
This is, of course, when the game is driven to the 
guns ; at such times the bags made are enormous, 
hundreds of birds often falling to a single sports- 
man. The labor is less, and the glory, but the 
boasting is prodigious. 

The shooters go out soon after breakfast — by ten 
o'clock always, and earlier when they are very 
much in earnest. The dresses are rough, necessa- 
rily ; the boots heavy-soled, for tramping over the 
moors ; the knickerbockers coarse, and in Scotland 
many wear the kilt. Lunch is taken on the moors, 



SPORT. 249 

and by two o'clock it is very acceptable. Some- 
times a cart comes out from the house with a hot 
lunch, and the ladies accompany it on ponies or in 
little carriages ; but if the game is far from the road 
the gillies carry cold meat and claret in hampers. 
Whiskey each man takes for himself. The game- 
keepers and gillies and beaters make quite a pro- 
cession, with the extra guns and the game-bags. 
They load for the gentry, and sometimes bring 
in the birds, and beat, and drive, and take as 
keen an interest in the sport as their masters, or 
the dogs, which also form an important part of 
the company. The fresh air, the mountain mist, 
the purple heather, the glimpses of scenery, the 
exhilaration of the exercise, all make the pastime 
more than fascinating, even for those who have 
less than an Englishman's passion for "killing 
things." 

In Scotland deer-stalking is another favorite form 
of the amusement. It is much more laborious, the 
sportsmen must walk farther, must lie on the hill- 
side often for hours, must watch more warily, and 
shoot perhaps more skilfully, but the glory of 
bringing home a stag is great enough to compen- 
sate. The deer-forests, as they are called, contain 
no trees; they are simply great stretches of broken 
land, probably once wooded, but now bare and 
bleak for miles and miles ; with little lochs scat- 
tered among the hills, their sloping banks covered 



250 ARISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

with masses of bracken, the hannt and the browse 
of the red deer. These vast expanses devoted to 
stalking make up a large part of the estates of the 
Scotch nobility. Hundreds of thousands of acres 
are included in the deer-forests of some half a dozen 
dukes and earls. 

A party of stalkers returning over the hills after 
a long day's sport, and standing out against the red 
evening sky, makes a picture that the stranger is 
sure to remember. Most of them are in Highland 
dress, with plaids and sporrans, feathers in their 
bonnets and daggers in their hose ; their legs are 
bare, and their guns are at their shoulders. The 
stag is slung over a pony in the middle of the 
group, his antlers attesting his age. They shout and 
wave their bonnets and plaids as they approach, 
and those who have remained at home are sure to 
go out to meet them at the gate, to listen to the 
story of the day's exploits, to count the branches 
on the antlers, and accompany the party to the 
larder or the butchery, where the stag is weighed 
and divided. At night the man who has shot 
a stag is entitled to wear a red waistcoat at 
dinner. 

A bath and a cup of tea refresh the jaded sports- 
man before the formal evening that follows. In 
Scotland, in the shooting season, dinner is often as 
late as nine, or even half-past nine ; and in the long 
northern twilight candles are seldom needed before 



SPORT. 251 

you sit down. The transformation in the appear- 
ance of the company when lights are brought in is 
sometimes startling. The rough garb of the sports- 
man has been exchanged for the habiliments of civ- 
ilization, and the women are resplendent in jewels 
and lace. They take their finest diamonds to the 
wilds, and there is a peculiar fascination about the 
splendor and luxury of an aristocratic dinner, after 
the hardships and excitement of the forest and the 
moor. 

The anglers have had more quiet pleasures, but 
they too boast at night of their successes, and the 
table groans under the results of the achievements 
of the day. 

Partridge-shooting begins on the 1st of Septem- 
ber, and is less arduous than grouse-shooting, and 
more of an English than a Scottish sport. Pheas- 
ants are not killed till October 1. This amuse- 
ment also is principally a southern one, but every 
county in England has its pheasant preserves. The 
battues ar6 enormous, and the covers like chicken 
yards. Game-keepers, indeed, are little more than 
stock-farmers, so far as pheasants are concerned ; 
and many of the earnest shooters despise this phase 
of sport. The English themselves never call it 
" hunting ; " they speak only of " shooting" pheas- 
ants. I should say butchering ; for the pheasants 
are sold. 

This is a feature of English sport that I never 



252 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

ceased to wonder at. These noblemen and gentle- 
men with their hundreds of thousands of acres and 
their hundreds of thousands of income, their estates 
and castles and retainers, their crowds of aristo- 
cratic guests — nearly all sell their game. I^ow and 
then they send a friend a brace of birds or a haunch 
of venison, but the game market is stocked by the 
nobility. To many of them it is a considerable 
source of revenue. I was once staying with a well- 
known nobleman while General Grant was Presi- 
dent. I had been out with the shooters, and 
thought it would be pleasant to send the President 
a brace of pheasants from the spot where they had 
been killed. I mentioned to one of the guests that 
I meant to suggest this to our host, but he cau- 
tioned me not to commit the blunder. The matter 
was discussed by the entire party, and every man 
declared it would be improper to make the re- 
quest. The game was marketable, and it would be 
indelicate to ask for it, even if I had shot the birds. 
]S"obody seemed to think this strange. The high 
spirit of an aristocrat did not revolt at selling the 
game that his guests had killed ; and the man who 
was lavish of his courtesies would have been 
amazed had I proposed he should pay this compli- 
ment to the head of a foreign State. 

The devotion to sport that characterizes the Eng- 
lish aristocracy is not elevating. It not only makes 
them indifferent to more serious occupations, taking 



SPORT. 253 

the hereditary legislators from the affairs of state to 
which they are supposed to apply themselves, and 
often distracting them from their own more impor- 
tant interests ; but the incessant practice is certainly 
brutalizing. To be forever planning and inflicting 
death and pain, even on animals, cannot be refining. 
The English nature is coarse in itself, but sport ren- 
ders it still more so. They say, indeed, that they 
shoot and kill and torture because all this is neces- 
sary in order to procure food. But butchering is 
also necessary, yet gentlemen do not select the 
shambles for their pastimes. The Frenchman's 
criticism was fair. " Let us go and kill something," 
is the Englishman's idea of pleasure ; and it is a 
coarse one. An American soldier once said some- 
thing like this at an English table in my hearing, 
and one of the company insinuated that the senti- 
ment was maudlin. But the American, who had 
been in forty battles, replied ; " Oh ! I believe in 
killing nothing but men." 

Like everything else in England, this pleasure is 
a matter of privilege. Game is strictly preserved 
for the great. The unprivileged man may not carry 
a gun. Every Englishman loves sport, the peasant 
as well as the peer, but poaching is a criminal 
offence ; and the poor man is sent for two months, 
six months, even a year, to gaol, for doing what 
gives the rich man his keenest gratification. Five 
thousand committals for poaching are made every 



254 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

year in England alone. The landlord is the magis- 
trate, and decides upon the punishment after con- 
victing of the crime. In this country of privilege, 
there is property even in the air ; and the peasant 
who has no farm, no house, and no hope of ever 
owning either, no amusement, often no meat, may 
not shoot the rabbit that roots up his garden, or the 
wild bird that flies over the moor. 

Nothing can be more fascinating for those who 
are fond of the pastime than the methods of aristo- 
cratic athletic pleasure ; nothing more elaborate and 
imposing than its appliances and appurtenances. 
God's uplands and valleys themselves are the play- 
ground of the nobility. The broad domains, the 
stretching moors, the thick coverts, the lofty mount- 
ains, the purple heath-covered hills, rolling and bil- 
lowy, like the waves of the sea, and, like them, 
extending to the horizon, are all reserved unbroken 
and undisturbed, for the amusement of the aristoc- 
racy ; these are the stage on which the great disport 
themselves. When across some scene of stately nat- 
ural grandeur or bewitching cultivated grace there 
passes a company of the masters of the soil, issuing 
perhaps from a great castle hoary with age and 
famous in history, with their guests and retainers, 
their horses and hounds, and guns and game, bent 
on exhilarating, manly pleasure ; surrounded with all 
that makes life splendid and gay — one cannot but 
admire the taste and luxury and magnificence that 



SPORT. 255 

come from centuries of privilege and generations 
used to caste. 

But at the same moment another procession of 
starving, houseless hinds, a million in number, is 
marching to the almshouse. 



XXVII. 
THE ACCESSIONS. 

I ONCE made a bet with a high-born dame that 
not fifty of the English peerages were two hundred 
years old. She was the granddaughter of earls on 
both sides of the house, and insisted that my remark 
was mere republican raillery. So we agreed to 
leave the decision to her cousin, a vice-chamberlain, 
and of course an authority. He pronounced that in 
one sense I was right. If we considered the titles 
by which the peers are now known, the old ones 
are as few as I had declared, but there are still others 
in existence lost in the promotions to which their 
wearers have later attained. As I had bet with a 
lady I paid without a protest, and she rewarded me 
with an invitation to Oakley Park, the seat of Earl 
Bathurst, which Pope celebrated in the line : 

"Who plants like Bathurst, and who builds like Boyle." 

The peerage indeed would have been small by this 
time but for the accessions which it constantly re- 
ceives. There were seventeen new lords created 
the last year I spent in England. Politics is the 



THE ACCESSIONS. 257 

principal avenue that leads to the House of Lords. 
But though the Prime Minister makes noblemen 
by the score, only one premier in the last hundred 
years has given himself a peerage before the close 
of his career. Lord Beaconsfield could not wait so 
long, and seized the prize in advance. He also con- 
ferred the Order of the Garter on himself and took 
the office of Lord Privy Seal, which gave him pre- 
cedence over all but five people in the kingdom, of 
less than royal degree. Sir Robert Walpole and 
Lord John Pussell both took their promotion when 
they ceased to be premiers. Sir Pobert Peel, the 
younger Pitt, and Charles James Fox remained 
commoners, but they all died young for English 
statesmen; as did also Canning. The widow of 
Canning, however, was made a viscountess. Lord 
Beaconsfield, on the contrary, made his wife a peer- 
ess long before he put on a coronet himself. Like 
most of the premiers, he felt that the House of 
Commons was his proper place, but the glitter of 
the gew-gaw was too mnch for him, and after a 
while he laid his hand npon an earldom. The 
wonder was he did not make himself a duke, for 
there was no one to say him nay. Doubtless had 
he remained in power, he would have mounted 
to the highest step in the ladder of the peerage, 
and donned the strawberry leaves. 

The demand for promotion is very openly made. 
A political adherent who thinks his services entitle 
IT 



258 AEISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

liiiii to the reward has no hesitancy in presenting 
his claim. The late Sir Francis Goldsmid narrated 
to me in detail the persistent efforts his father made 
for this sort of recognition. Sir Isaac Goldsmid 
was one of the most prominent Jewish gentlemen 
in the kingdom ; he had served, not only his 
party, but the country, faithfully and liberally, 
and advanced large sums to the Government in 
critical emergencies. He was extremely anxious 
for a title, but a peerage was out of the question, 
and he had a long struggle before Lord Palmerston 
consented to make him a baronet. This was fortj^- 
five years ago, and not until last year was a Jew 
created a peer ; the head of the Kothschilds was 
then elevated to the House of Lords. Long before 
this the financial importance of the great Hebrew 
family had secured them nobility in nearly every 
other European state, but the Rothschilds were not 
satisfied till their wealth had bought them admission 
to the British House of Lords. 

For these foreign titles, which the Continental 
courts do not scruple to bestow on successful bank- 
ers and others in trade, are not much esteemed in 
England. They confer no precedence there, and 
are not recognized at court. The bearers must 
obtain especial license from Her Majesty to use 
either arms or title, though they sometimes put the 
latter on their cards without authority. 'Not long 
ago there were two of these gentlemen living 



THE ACCESSIONS. 259 

in England, well known and respected — Baron 
Worms and Baron Stern. The latter was made a 
viscount by some European sovereign, whereupon 
the wits remarked : " This will give him precedence 
of — Baron Worms." 

Some years ago I congratulated a subordinate 
member of Mr. Gladstone's government upon being 
made a privy councillor, but the ambition of the 
placeman was far from appeased. He told me that 
his eldest son, then an Eton boy of twelve or thir- 
teen years, had said to him : " Papa, if they offer 
you a peerage, be sure not to refuse it. Remember 
me." The boy and his father had evidently set 
their hearts on the same prize. The aspiring com- 
moner has since become a peer, so that the son is 
satisfied ; and the father, then a strong Radical, is 
now a Tory of the Tories. 

In 1871 the Queen created the rich and charitable 
Miss Burdett-Coutts a baroness in her own right; a 
recognition of moral excellence never made before 
in the history of the British aristocracy. But even 
in this case the wealth was as indispensable as the 
individual worth. Lady Burdett-Coutts might have 
emulated the virtues of all the Saints in the 
Calendar, but if poverty had been on the list of her 
merits, she could not have entered the English 
peerage. Indeed, had Her Majesty foreseen that 
celibacy was not to be included, the wealthy phi- 
lanthropist would certainly have remained a com- 



260 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

moner. It was because there could be no successor 
that the sovereign was pleased to dispense her favor. 
The lady married, however, at the mature age of 
sixty-five, and the Queen was indignant at this 
violation of the implied contract ; although it was 
certain the baroness would never transmit her 
honors to an heir. 

Wealth has always been held an essential qualifi- 
cation in the candidates for the aristocracy, and 
many of those otherwise fitted for the promotion 
have failed of it because of the lack of this indis- 
pensable attribute. The great soldiers had to re- 
ceive pensions and sometimes estates with their 
peerages, to enable them to maintain their dig- 
nity ; and at one time the politicians also reckoned 
pelf as well as promotion among their perquisites, 
but of late years the public feeling would not 
have sanctioned such a disposition of the public 
moneys. 

The Speaker of the House of Commons is the 
first Commoner in the Kingdom, and always re- 
ceives a peerage when he resigns, that he may not 
step back into the ranks. The Speaker of the 
House of Lords is the Lord Chancellor; if not 
already a peer he is always promoted before he 
ascends the woolsack, and remains noble, of course, 
with his family forever. The greatest of the lawyers 
is thus always a peer ; but the most successful of 
his brethren are never ennobled, unless they have 



THE ACCESSIONS. 261 

amassed sufficient fortunes to compete with in- 
herited splendor. 

Pliysicians may never arrive at the peerage. The 
slur of the older days, when barbers were surgeons, 
remains ; and the most eminent medical men who 
illustrate the English name to-day, though they 
save the lives of princes and lessen the sufferings 
of humanity, are never rewarded with more than 
a baronetcy. The English doctors take their pay 
with every visit, and the saying is that no man who 
has held out his hand for a fee can ever be made an 
English peer. Yet many of the nobility have held 
out their hands — for bribes. 

The great brewers, however, nearly all attain to 
the aristocratic degree. Malt seems to possess a 
peculiar patrician quality, though no man of letters 
or purely literary genius, except Tennyson, has ever 
received a coronet. The blood of the Basses and 
Alsops and Guinnesses may become "blue," but 
that of Browning and Thackeray and Froude re- 
mains plebeian. 

After politics and money, marriage is the key 
that unlocks the august portals of the aristocracy 
with greatest ease. The nobility may marry whom 
they please, and their wives will be peeresses ; their 
(legitimate) children are all in the succession, even 
if born of dairy-maids. Many of the wives of the 
lords are from the middle class. A rich heiress can 
buy a coronet any day. There are marchionesses 



262 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

now living whose fortunes fresh from trade saved 
the ancient estates of aristocracy from the hammer ; 
while ladies with the odor of tobacco about their 
garments have penetrated into patrician families 
and shone in the most exclusive spheres. The taint 
disappears at the entrance. They leave the shop 
entirely behind when once they are initiated. 

I knew a countess who dropped her H's, yet she 
visited the daughters of dukes. I discussed her 
once with a high-born associate of her later years, 
who pretended to believe she was American in 
origin. " No, no, Lady Charlotte," I replied, " the 
H's prove her nationality;" — and Lady Charlotte 
unwillingly admitted that the evidence was irrefu- 
table. 

Of late years, American beauties and fortunes 
have often found their way into the aristocracy; 
and the Queen can count among her nobler subjects 
at least half a score who began life as republicans. 

The stage has furnished peeresses from the days 
when Miss Farren became Countess of Derby down 
to a Countess of Essex that I knew, who had been 
a public singer, and whose manners were as courtly 
and her assemblies as crowded as those of the De 
Teres. Miss O'Neill, the tragedian, became Lady 
Becher, and was living until lately, charming and 
respected. The Countess Waldegrave in her youth 
accompanied her father, Braham, the tenor, at his 
concerts, at the same houses which were afterwards 



THE ACCESSIONS. 263 

proud to welcome her as a guest ; and there is a 
woman of title and fashion in London to-day, whom 
a famous wit assured me he saw enter Brighton in 
tights and on a camel, l^ow she entertains sover- 
eigns. Every one will remember the ancestress of 
the St. Albans who sold oranges in the pit to 
Charles II., and her virtue afterward to the same 
customer at a higher price. 

Beauty has always won the favor of the British 
peers. The eldest son, or the man in possession, 
can afford to please his taste ; and doubtless the 
handsome looks of many of the nobility are due to 
the beautiful women who have recruited its ranks 
so largely. The illegitimate children of sovereigns 
have been ennobled, down to and including the last 
reign, and in the present day young peers and heirs 
have sought mates in half a score of instances among 
those whose presence sullies any society they enter. 

The blue blood does not seem to curdle at the 
contact, for the grandest of English peers welcome 
to their ancestral homes the brewers and bankers, the 
tailors and tobacconists, who, as soon as they become 
noble, look down as superciliously on plebeians as 
any descendant of peer or paramour. A stroke of 
the wand of Cinderella's godmother turned vermin 
into decorated lackeys fit to go to court ; and the 
flunkeys did not forget their rat-hole more readily 
than these transformed aristocrats their early obscur- 
ity. Blood will tell; and their blood is noble — now. 



XXVIII. 
LITERATURE AND THE LORDS. 

It is the fashion to say that in these days the 
barriers of rank are broken down, that literary repu- 
tation is a social passport, and genius opens all 
doors; that the aristocracy itself has entered the 
lists and recognized the equality of poets and 
philosophers with its highest members. But noth- 
ing can be more fallacious than this opinion. The 
lords open their doors to men and women of parts, 
it is true, but the purpose is to amuse themselves, 
not to do honor to literature. In old times they 
had their jesters and their bards, to while away the 
time or to chronicle their deeds. Froissart and Ben 
Jonson did little more, in their eyes. So the Queen 
still keeps a poet laureate to celebrate the births 
and marriages of her progeny, and duchesses have 
authors and actors at their parties to entertain their 
guests, as they have music and ice-cream. 

The geniuses would like to believe, because they 
are sometimes invited to dinner, or even to a 
country-house, that the feeling of the aristocracy is 
changed ; but let one of them ask to marry the 



LITERATURE AND THE LORDS. 265 

daughter of a duke and he will discover how wide 
is the gulf that separates them. Let him presume 
in any way too far upon the notice that he thinks 
is a friendship, and he will be dropped with as little 
ceremony as if his lordship were dismissing a foot- 
man. The people of letters are admitted or invited 
to-day, and forgotten or ignored to-morrow. They 
may be in society for a while, they are never of it ; 
and if they no longer wait in the ante-room as 
Johnson did at Chesterfield House, they must make 
themselves either serviceable or agreeable if they 
expect to stay upstairs. They know this very w^ell, 
though they don't always tell it, and the more dig- 
nified ones keep aloof from the great world. Dick- 
ens w^as invited to Windsor to play in private 
theatricals before the Queen, but refused to go, 
because he could not be received as a gentleman. 
Others, however, are content to follow in the train 
where their wives are seldom placed at all, or to sit 
at the bottom of the table, as really now as in the 
days of Temple and Sw^ft, below the salt. 

I know that all this wiU be denied. A well-known 
wit, himself a middle-class man, who was much in- 
vited because of his learned gossip and his talent for 
repartee, wrote pages in the Quarterly Remew to 
prove that a man who has attained distinction in 
any walk of life is received on a footing of equality 
by the aristocracy. But the assertion is preposterous. 
Taine and Laugel, the two acutest critics of English 



266 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

life in later years, assert the contrary. Gladstone 
and Thackeray constantly proclaim the existence of 
the distinction that I describe. Laugel declares: 
" For the middle-man, for the peasant, for the shop- 
keeper, even for the Radical, the lord is not a man 
like another." Lord Houghton, the most liberal of 
aristocrats, wrote : "" There are barriers in our social 
life which no individual will or power can throw 
down. You cannot bring into close sympathetic 
communion the operative poor and the inoperative 
rich, any more in intellectual than in physical rela- 
tions." To illustrate this he describes a passage be- 
tween Lady Ash burton and Thackeray. The nov- 
elist had been much invited by the aristocrat, but 
there came a difference between them and a discon- 
tinuance of the social relations. Houghton says 
that Thackeray was discourteous. After a while, 
however, the peeress, as the grander personage, 
made an advance. She sent the literary man a 
card to dinner, and he replied with a pictorial ac- 
ceptance, representing himself on his knees at her 
ladyship's feet, while she was heaping coals of fire 
on his head from an ornamented brazier. After 
this, says Lord Houghton, she was always very kind 
to Thackeray and his family. 

Mrs. Carlyle tells of a journey she and her great 
husband made to Scotland in the train of this same 
Lady Ashburton, who took them along indeed, but 
in a separate compartment, as she would her lackey 



LITER ATUEE AND THE LORDS. 267 

or her lap-dog. Carlyle, it is true, sometimes was 
sent in to dinner at the head of the company, but 
so was Sara Bernhardt, in my time; and in each 
instance the distinction was an impertinence. It 
was not because the author or the actor was con- 
sidered above the nobility, but because they were 
not in the degrees at all. The forms which the 
aristocracy maintain among themselves are inap- 
plicable with such outsiders, and the dramatic or 
literary lions may in this way come to receive the 
place usually reserved for princes. If they were 
given a definite station in the line it would be more 
like a recognition of their quality. But nobody 
supposed the French artist was grander than duch- 
esses because she walked in before them ; and to- 
day if she went back to London, the houses where 
she once was welcomed, would be closed to her. 
The fashion is past. 

Two or three men of letters have, it is true, main- 
tained a permanent position in aristocratic society, 
but it is one neither lofty nor dignified. These are 
received not because of any personal distinction or 
position, not because they have written poetry or 
history or romance, but because they are men of 
agreeable manners and interesting information, used 
to the forms and relishing the frivolities of the great 
world — intellectual courtiers and time-servers. They 
are diners-out, though they don't dine lords in re- 
turn ; they haunt ball-rooms and race-courses and 



AEISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 



country-houses ; but they are seldom seen at court. 
In the ordinary intercourse of society you might 
imagine that they belonged to the sphere in which 
they seem to move, but the moment the great ques- 
tion of rank is raised, they fall back to their own 
place; everybody precedes them and passes by 
them, and if matters of privilege are discussed, they 
are necessarily and of course ignored. 

But the nobility, it is said, is itself engaged in 
literature; and the lords, and the ladies, too, do 
dabble a little in literature. Lord Mahon, after- 
wards Lord Stanhope, wrote a dreary history ; the 
Duke of Argyll has discussed science, and the late 
Duke of Somerset religion, in a manner quite 
abnormal in dukes, but their labors would have at- 
tracted little attention in persons of lower degree. 
A dozen or more lords and lordlings have written 
books of travel or memoirs, with the assistance of 
their doctors, or tutors, or secretaries; and one or 
two titled dames have put their names to really 
readable romances ; while, as the courts of law can 
testify, the quality contribute gossip and scandal at 
a guinea an item to the society journals, and an 
editor has been sent to jail for the libels that a 
countess supplied. 

But these caprices of the aristocracy never lower 
them in the eyes of their equals or inferiors. A 
duke or a countess may write books and not lose 
caste, just as some of them play in private theatri- 



LITERATURE AND THE LORDS. 269 

cals or sing at concerts for charity; the Duke of 
Edinburgh even plays the violin in public in the 
orchestra. But all this is very different from be- 
longing to the trade. Dukes drive the coach to 
Brighton, and I have seen a viscount touch his hat 
and take a tip from an unknown passenger, as he 
put a portmanteau into the boot. But for all that, 
no one considered him the fellow of a genuine Jehu. 
So it is with literature. 

The Duke of Argyll is looked upon as par excel- 
cellence the literary peer. While I was in London 
he presided at a Press Fund dinner. His speech was 
full of condescension and consideration for the liter- 
ary guild. He applauded the merits of these worthy 
members of the middle class, declared that they 
should be protected, and supported and encouraged ; 
and altogether spoke of them about as a Congress- 
man here might discuss the occupants of tenement- 
houses or broken-down cobblers deserving charity. 

The literary people were of the same mind as his 
Grace. They were delighted to get a duke to talk 
thus to them ; to teach them their duty, to preside 
at their dinner and send them a couple of guineas 
for their fund. The spirit of the jester still lingers. 
Thackeray himself tells how proud he was to walk 
dowm Pall Mall between dukes. Sir Thomas 
Erskine May, who has lived all his life among 
lords, devotes pages of his Constitutional History 
of England to glorifying and upholding the influ- 



270 AiJISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

ence of the aristocracy. Yet Thackeray satirized 
the foibles of the people he considered his betters 
with a lash as cutting as Juvenal's, and Erskine 
May describes in detail the corruptions and mean- 
nesses, the bargains and sales, the tricks and devices 
by means of which the peerage has been recruited 
and maintained. The newspapers follow the lead 
of the poets and novehsts and historians. Pages of 
every journal are devoted to descriptions of feasts 
to which newspaper writers are never asked, and to 
details of the life and pursuits of the most ordinary 
characters who happen to have title and rank, from 
Princes of the Blood down to city knights and Com- 
panions of the Bath. 

Everybody in England knows how a lord is 
made ; that barbers may become Lord Chancellors 
and brewers get baronies ; that political service or 
trickery, or wealth obtained often by questionable 
means, can secure that nobility which is denied to 
science and letters and art. Yet Froude and 
Leckey and May uphold the system, and journal- 
ists with more power than any duke in the peerage, 
prostrate themselves in their columns at the men- 
tion of a lord. Nine-tenths of the literary men in 
England feel honored when asked to the tables of 
persons with less education or character or ability 
than themselves. 

The people who use the pen, indeed, do more for 
the continuance of the aristocratic system and the 



LITEEATUEE AND THE LOEDS. 271 

development of its pernicious influence than any 
other class in the community. They spread the 
doctrines and intensify the sentiments which sup- 
port an institution more hostile to the greatest good 
of the greatest number than any other that exists 
in civilized society. If the men of letters fought 
the lords, the lords would succumb. But tlie men 
of letters serve and follow the lords, and the aristoc- 
racy flaunt their insolence in the face of the world, 
and take these intellectual superiors in their train 
to proclaim their magnificence, to illuminate their 
feasts, and to celebrate the splendor they may not 
share. These deserve the place they accept. They 
recall a description I long ago read of a Kussian serf 
carefully holding the horses for his master, who stood 
on the shafts, while he horse-whipped the slave. 

One of the most famous English writers of the 
century told me that he had once been very inti- 
mate with Motley, the historian. They were fel- 
low-laborers in the same field; but after the 
American was made a Minister the British author 
held aloof. Motley, he said, was now in another 
sphere; he lived in the aristocratic circle where 
English men of letters do not belong. He evi- 
dently thought the diplomatist would look down on 
the literary class, and he recognized the distance 
that rank had put between himself and his old 
associate. 



XXIX. 
THE LONDON SEASON. 

The season depends upon Parliament, and Par- 
liament depends upon sport. The fashionable 
world is composed very largely of those connected 
with either the House of Lords or the House of 
Commons ; and when Parliament meets, their fam- 
ilies come up to town. For the nobility live in 
the country, their homes are on their estates, and 
their town-houses are only for sojourn when they 
happen to be in London. The great world does 
not begin its whirl till politics summons the im- 
portant members to transact the business of the 
nation. In February, usually in the second week, 
after the best of the hunting is over, the Queen — 
that is, the Prime Minister — calls her "lords and 
gentlemen " together. Then the fashionable season 
begins. 

The people connected with the government, the 
diplomatic corps, those of the gentry who have no 
large estates, the lawyers and literary people, and 
others who live by their exertions, all these are in 
town for the most part from November, with an 



THE LONDON SEASON. 273 

interval of a fortnight at Christmas. They make a 
very pleasant and intimate society among them- 
selves : small but accessible, and often much more 
delightful than the more pompous and pretentious 
circle that comes only with Parliament. 

From February until Easter is another pleasant 
period. London is not yet crowded. Many fami- 
lies do not leave the country so soon. The rush 
has not begun. There are yet no court-balls nor 
concerts, and the veterans make a point of attending 
the levees and drawing-rooms at this time, so as to 
avoid the mobs that crowd to court later on. The 
ante-paschal season is perhaps the most agreeable 
part of the London year. There are few dances in 
Lent, and not so many of the formal receptions 
which nobody wants to attend and yet everybody 
attends. There are incessant dinners, but many of 
them are small ; there are occasional theatre parties, 
and numerous five-o'clock teas. 

But just as people begin to get used to each 
other, and fall into the habit of meeting two or 
three times a week those whom they really want to 
see — Easter intervenes. Parliament is adjourned, 
and everybody who has a house in the country goes 
to it. Large country-house parties are made, and 
the world of politics and fashion deserts London. 
Those who have neither country-houses nor country 
invitations would be lonely in town, and they run 
off to the Continent for a fortnight, or to Brighton, 



274 AiJISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

or some other resort of forlorn, houseless, fashion- 
able wanderers. 

After Easter the full tide sets in, everybody is 
up. The great houses are all open ; the park is full 
in the afternoon ; the Row is crowded every morn- 
ing with a thousand horsewomen, the finest in the 
world, and the Englishwomen look better in the 
saddle than anywhere else. Lunches are frequent, 
dinners innumerable. Forty people often sit at 
one sumptuous board, and the overflow sometimes 
reaches to side tables ; clever people, if not of too 
high rank, contend for these cosy corners, where 
they can choose their partners. Balls now begin, 
to the sorrow of unfortunate chaperon es and the 
delight of the debutantes. The Queen's drawing- 
rooms are crowded. Politics are everywhere dis- 
cussed. Theatres and operas are abandoned by 
people of fashion ; for you cannot dine at eight 
o'clock and go to the play the same night ; w^hile 
the opera has for years been given up to those who 
like music, and to strangers and others who fancy 
it is the mode, because it was so half a century ago. 

But the whirl lasts only four or ^ve weeks, 
when Whitsuntide comes ; and then another recess, 
and more than half the world flits again to the 
country, which by this time is enchanting. I used 
at first to find these constant interruptions to the 
round of society very provoking ; just as one got in 
the swim there was a gate or a dike, and a halt ; 



THE LONDON SEASON. 275 

but after some years I liked the fashion too. The 
Hlacs and laburnums, the hawthorne and the gorse 
are all in their glory about Whitsuntide, and those 
who have ever seen the resplendent beauty of the 
flowering trees and meads of England, or heard the 
music of the nightingale and the lark, the black- 
bird and the thrush in May or early June, they 
know the exquisite charm of sound and color and 
fragrance that permeates the landscape, the refresh- 
ment of brain and sense that comes with the balmy 
atmosphere of this soft and gracious time. 

There are not so many large parties to the 
country at Whitsuntide as at Easter. The recess is 
shorter, and those who go down to their estates 
sometimes go for the pleasure of seeing them in 
their vernal garment of tender green and variegated 
border, or to rest before the great plunge into the 
vortex of fashion after their return. 

You come back, usually, late in May. It is now 
the height of the season. The country is never so 
attractive in its loveliness, but many of the owners 
of great estates assured me they had never seen 
their homes in June. They possess great gardens 
of geraniums, roseries in which no land can rival 
England, lawns and pastures and groves and glades 
delicious in verdure beyond those of any country 
on earth ; but since childhood these slaves of the 
world have never known what it was to look on 
their own landscapes and enjoy the principal beauty 



276 AKISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

of their own properties at the season when their 
natural glories culminate. You must be in town 
in June, if jou are in the world. 

You must go to late dinners and later balls. You 
must breathe the hot atmosphere of Parliament, and 
the still more stifling air at court. You must be 
clad in the stiff garments that etiquette prescribes for 
every hour ; you must devote yourself to a round 
of visits and entertainments which would be most 
acceptable in dreary winter, but now distract you 
from delights that are rare in England because of 
the climate. At this moment, when the climate 
and the country are alike Saturnian, you forsake 
the country and come up to town. For so fashion 
decrees. Or rather so the sportsmen determine; 
the men will not abandon their guns and their 
game in the autumn and winter, and this leaves 
only the spring and summer for town. And in 
England, society, like everything else, is ruled by 
the men. The women only exist to give them 
pleasure and do them service ; to marry them, to 
rear their children, to preside over their homes, to 
decorate their entertainments. What the men 
want is always done, and the women submit, as a 
matter of course. 

But since they must be in town in summer, the 
English make the best of the necessity. Half their 
amusements are out of doors. First there is the 
Derby day, about the last of May or the first of 



THE LONDON SEASON. 277 

June. In some years this is the fashion, in others, 
not; but Parliament always adjourns for the race; 
and the people who live in the streets leading to 
Epsom, hang carpets over their balconies and in\dte 
their friends to look at the returning crowds. On 
the 4th of June there is Commencement at Eton, 
and a boat-race by the boys, to which swarms of 
smart people go down. 

Then there are cricket matches between the Lords 
and the Commons, between Oxford and Cambridge, 
between Eton and Harrow. These are held at a 
pleasure-ground called "Lord's" in the outskirts 
of London, and are very high fashion indeed. 
The great folk send their largest carriages down the 
night before, and the enclosure is lined three rows 
deep. Next day they drive down in landaus, 
broughams, and victorias, and mount the drags or 
coaches in their gayest gowns and highest beavers, 
to watch the game. They lunch on the carriages 
and get back in time for dinner. 

Above all now is the time for garden parties. 
Chiswick is a delightful seat of the Duke of Devon- 
shire on the banks of the Thames, which in some 
years he lends to the Prince of Wales on condition 
that His Highness gives two great breakfasts a 
season. The parties at Strawberry Hall are histor- 
ical, as well as those at Sion House and Osterley, 
the parks of the Duke of Northumberland and the 
Dowager Duchess of Cleveland. The nearest of 



278 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

these is ten miles from London, but people think 
nothing of driving out and back between luncheon 
and dinner. Closer to town are the lodges of the 
Duke of Argyll and Lady Burdett-Coutts ; and 
noblest of all, Holland House, with its memories 
more stately even than its architecture, and more 
unfading than its far-famed landscape and lawn. 
All these are thronged every season with people of 
highest rank and oldest name ; as many statesmen 
and soldiers and diplomatists as butterflies of 
fashion, wits or belles, or dowagers or dandies. 
Even the Queen throw^s open the gardens of Buck- 
ingham Palace sometimes in July, and invites a few 
thousand of her greatest subjects to afternoon tea. 

These garden parties are unique in effect and 
loveliness. The women wear costumes of the light- 
est fabrics and most delicate colors, appropriate in 
tint and texture for a ball ; the men are the best 
dressed and the handsomest in the world ; the lawns 
and trees and gardens make the most charming 
background ; there are marquees and music, carpets 
spread here and there on the grass ; sometimes an 
archery match or an alfresco play; sometimes 
Punch and Judy under the blossoms for the chil- 
dren. The scene is worthy of Watteau's daintiest 
pencil. 

In the midst of all this comes Ascot week, when 
those who have invitations whirl down to the races 
which royalty attends in state. This makes another 



THE LOOT)ON SEASON. 279 

lull in the gayety, but only a lull ; for it is now July 
and every one has too much to do. There are the 
Court balls and concerts ; an Emperor, or a Shah, 
or a Czar is sure to arrive, whom some very grand 
personage must entertain, and everybody must go to 
see him, or say they have done so. Politics are at 
fever heat. Some important question is to be de- 
bated or settled in Parliament, and the world goes 
to the House of Lords for a night. Dinners at 
Richmond are popular at this period. People drive 
down in morning dress and boat on the Thames, or 
sit on the Terrace and look at the marvellous land- 
scape w^hich Turner painted but could not rival. 
They dine at the Star and Garter Inn, and drive 
back through the delicious glades of Richmond 
Park in the long twilight or the moonlight, or per- 
haps under a shower that touches every leaf with 
a more glistening green, yet hardly harms the most 
fragile garment of the gayest noble dame. 

Wimbledon is the last of the fetes champetres. 
All the world goes to see the shooting by the 
Volunteers, and the lucky ones stop at one or two 
of the charming retreats that still linger along the 
road, hidden from the passer-by, who never suspects 
the exquisite charm of woodland and dell so near 
and yet concealed. 

But the Lords, and the Commons too, begin to 
get restive as August approaches ; for on the twelfth 
grouse-shooting begins. Arrangements are made 



280 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

for Scotland and the ISTorth ; those who are ordered 
to Carlsbad or Kissingen for their sins, or their 
amusement, make ready to start. A few familiar 
faces are ah'eadj missed. Here and there a great 
house is closed. There are not so many carriages 
in the Ring, not so many riders in the Row. Of a 
Sunday afternoon there are fewer light gowns on 
the seats in Hyde Park. The debates are more 
languid. The Minister announces what measures he 
must abandon for lack of time, and this " Massacre 
of the Innocents," as it is called, is a sure precursor 
of the end. Usually by the sacred 12th, all is over, 
and if by some strange fatality the Houses have 
not yet been prorogued, the world is gone ; streets 
and halls are deserted ; the gay and the great are 
scattered over mountain and moor, in Switzerland 
or the Highlands, shooting, or drinking the waters, 
or resting for their autumnal labors. The London 
season is at an end. 



\ 



XXX. 

ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE. 

As a legislative body, the Peers must hereafter 
always yield when they are opposed by the will of 
a popular minister ; but those are greatly mistaken 
who suppose that their sway is entirely past. On 
the outside of Parliament the Lords are still power- 
ful if not paramount. In society, on their estates, 
in the hunting field, in the Church, the army, the 
press, the courts of law, their influence is prodigious. 

In all the circles that make up English high 
society, aristocratic politics are predominant. What 
the Lords think and wish is all-important there. 
Nothing in this w^orld can be more delightful or de- 
sirable for the fortunate few who possess it, than the 
position of the English aristocrats ;. and naturally 
they favor the political party which aims at retain- 
ing this position lor them ; or, rather, they lead and 
control, they constitute, and to a great degree com- 
pose it. At clubs and dinners and country houses, 
as well as in the newspapers controlled by those 
who frequent such places or aspire to do so, the tone 
of politics is generally very different from what pre- 



282 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

vails in less exclusive spheres. Public opinion often 
does not penetrate to the Peers, but their opinions 
always filter outward and downward. Every great 
lady in England is interested in the movements and 
measures of politics, and is acquainted with most of 
the prominent men, at least on her own side. Many 
are politicians themselves, and some have really 
been leaders, though as a rule only of personal 
cliques and for personal motives. They are, of 
course, conservative. 

"When Lord Beaconsfield returned from Berlin in 
1878, having arrested the advance of Russia upon 
Constantinople, half a dozen duchesses met him at 
the railway station with salutations and flowers, to 
indicate their partisanship. Later still there have 
been instances of women of rank attempting to in- 
fluence the electors. It is not long since Lady 
Derby was openly accused of illegally soliciting 
votes on Lord Derby's estates. The first Lady Dilke, 
though only a baronet's wife, drove about London 
in an open carriage distributing favors when her 
husband was a candidate; and the part that an 
American aristocrat, Lady Randolph Churchill, 
took in the elections of 1885, is as well known here 
as in England. 

All of which shows that the blandishments of 
rank are as potent with the tradesmen of Chelsea or 
the peasants of Woodstock, as with Prime Minis- 
ters. For it is not only the feminine charm that is 



ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE. 283 

irresistible, although EDglishmen as a rule are very 
manly, and therefore very susceptible to womanly 
wiles ; but had these ladies been simply the equals 
of those whom they sought to affect, their success 
would not have been achieved nor their effort 
made. It was arrogance and assumption of the 
most arrant sort. But the Enghsh like arrogance 
and assumption in their betters. They consider 
these qualities appropriate in those entitled to dis- 
play them. 

The aristocratic influence does not stop short at 
society, nor is it confined to elections. Wealth 
everywhere that is not inherited, whether acquired 
by manufactures or commerce or whatever means, 
seeks to bask in the favor of the nobility, is ambi- 
tious of their connection, craves admission to their 
company. The professions lean for their support on 
the higher orders. The lawyers, who manage the 
estates of the lords, and the physicians, who care 
for their bodies, are alike dependants of the aristoc- 
racy, and so regard themselves. The Church and 
the army have long been appurtenances of the great 
monopoly. The clergy are, for the most part, the 
creatures of lay patronage, and peculiarly connected 
with the landed interest ; they everywhere cleave 
to power. Not until 1871 was purchase abolished 
in the army. Up to that date, the purchase of com- 
missions was one of the especial and favorite means 
by which the aristocracy provided for its members 



284 AEISTOCEACY m ENGLAND. 

and preserved its privileges. The army is to-day 
officered in a great degree by men who bought their 
rank, and expected when they did so to buy their 
promotion. 

Even in the courts of law the influence of the 
aristocracy is apparent. A lord may sit on the bench 
beside a judge, though often he is a notorious vio- 
lator of the law. If a drunken marquis or a rowdy 
viscount is brought before a magistrate, he is usually 
treated with servile deference, a fine is meted out 
to him for the offence which in a humbler culprit 
would be punished with imprisonment, and my 
lord is bowed graciously out of court. The Eng- 
lish are fond of proclaiming the incorruptible char- 
acter of their judiciary, and of late years judges 
have hardly ever been bought with money; but 
social influences have repeatedly affected the con- 
duct and the decisions of the courts. In the famous 
Tichborne case the whole pressure of society was 
brought to bear upon judge and advocate, till, to 
the disgrace of the profession and the bench, the 
barrister threw up his brief and deserted his client 
when the case was only half tried, and two judges 
in succession ruled so notoriously to the prejudice 
of the accused that both the press and public opin- 
ion proclaimed a disapproval. 

In the case of the will of a late Lord Chancellor, 
a decision, manifestly in violation of law, was 
brought about by similar influences. The testimony 



ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE. 285 

of the daughter of Lord St. Leonards was received 
as to the language of a will in her own favor, 
though the original will was lost. There was, in 
fact, no proof that the will had ever been made, 
except the evidence of the interested party ; yet the 
judge decided that a document reversing all the 
ordinary rules of English descent should be ac- 
cepted, though it had never been in court. But 
high society was hostile to the regular heir. 

The influence of the aristocracy upon literature 
and the press is too important a theme to be discussed 
in a paragraph. But there are many of the learned 
and intellectual men of England so affected by the 
splendor and pageantry of rank that their reason is 
subdued by their imagination ; or else they are so 
constituted by nature that they prefer stability to 
progress. Since so much has been achieved un- 
der aristocratic rule they are averse to change, and 
remain indifferent to the misery which must exist 
so long as the great disparity of condition con- 
tinues. 

The tradesmen in the cities and smaller towns 
are supported by the aristocracy ; the farmers in the 
country are their tenants and dependants ; of course, 
these follow the lead of their masters and supe- 
riors. 

The hinds, as they are still called, the helots on 
the estates, are as stolid and brutish a race as any 
peasantry in the world, and seem, like the slaves at 



286 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

the South before emancipation, content with their 
condition, because thej have never known or con- 
ceived an J other. They are bred to suppose that 
what thej see is the natural order of things, and 
that change is not only wrong but impossible ; that 
their lot is ordained of God, as inevitable as death, 
and deliverance as far off as the stars. The parson 
preaches this doctrine for religion ; the squire lays 
it down as the law ; for the squire is also the Jus- 
tice of the Peace, the highest and often the only 
officer of the law the laborer ever sees. Law, re- 
ligion, rank, power, all are on one side ; and the 
wretch with his shilling a day and his family to 
support lives near the palace of his master, and rots 
and drinks, or starves and dies, ignorant of the 
possibility of improvement, and submissive — they 
say. 

I remember discussing the permanency of Eng- 
lish institutions with a man who had been in half 
the Governments of England during the last fifty 
years. He expressly invited my opinions, and I 
spoke freely. I said that of course the aristocracy 
and the upper classes were content with their con- 
dition, and even with the general state of affairs ; 
that the middle class — comprising those who live 
by the aristocracy — the tradesmen, the domestic 
servants, and the farmers, and higher still, those 
who aspire to enter the aristocracy, or, at least, to 
associate with it, were unwilling to disturb that 



ABISTOCKATIC INFLUENCE. 287 

order which is their support and their pride ; but 
when the class below all these is reached, the manu- 
facturing working class and the agricultural laborer 
— eight millions at least in numbers — I doubted 
whether content was universal or whether, if thej 
had the power, thej would use it to maintain either 
Crown or Lords. It was then that he replied with 
the remark I have quoted before : "Every English- 
man is at heart a lackey. We all want something 
above us ; something to kotow to." 

He admitted that the manufacturing working 
people were radical, and perhaps revolutionary, in 
their ideas ; but he thought the hinds on the estates 
preferred to have superiors ; that the feudal feeling 
with them was still uppermost; that they were 
satisfied. Stolid, it seems to me they are, but not 
satisfied ; and when they get some notion that a 
different life for them is possible, when they dis- 
cover that their class in other countries exerts an in- 
fluence, I would not answer for their submissive- 
ness. The lackeys may be taken from this class, 
but not all the class are lackeys. The President of 
the Poor Law Board, the highest authority on these 
matters in England, informed me that there are a 
million of paupers in the kingdom, wretches with- 
out a particle of means, supported by the State. It 
is impossible that the contrast between this worse 
than poverty and the opulence and luxury of others 
should not sometimes present itself to the stupidest 



288 ARISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

mind. The very week after this conversation the 
agricultural disturbances of 1870 occurred, and the 
movement led by Joseph Arch ; and all England 
was anxious for months lest the helots should rise. 
To-day they have the ballot. 



GLADSTONE -THE ICONOCLAST. 

The great antagonist of Aristocracy in England 
at the present time is William Ewart Gladstone; 
yet he began his career as a Tory and High-Church- 
man. One of Macaulay's early essays was a "Whig 
attack on a manifesto by a young man whom the 
reviewer called ''The Eising Hope of the Stern 
and Unbending Tories." The book was Glad- 
stone's defence of '' The State in its Eelations with 
the Church." To-day the Tory has passed beyond 
the position even of the Whigs, and left them far 
to the rear. In both Church and State they are 
the drag and he is the leader — as the coach rolls 
rapidly down the hill of Eevolution — the Tories say. 

His transition has been gradual. I^o statesman 
in history has grown more steadily or furnished a 
finer instance of evolution. For years he was sim- 
ply the great financier of his party ; he looked little 
to the revolutionary or progressive politics that 
were developing around him. But, as the old lead- 
ers like Sir Eobert Peel, Lord Palmerston, and the 
last Lord Derbv passed away, and Lord Eussell 
19 



290 ABISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

became decrepit and finally senile, two younger 
men stepped into the arena, grander figures in Eng- 
lish politics than any since the days of Pitt and 
Fox, and one, at least, destined to leave a deeper 
impress on the history of his country than even 
those giants of the Napoleonic day. 

In 1869, when I first went to England, Disraeli 
and Gladstone were the acknowledged chiefs of the 
two great political camps. One had worked his 
way up by the adroitest use of all the arts of policy 
and personal address, by attacking his friends and 
deserting his chiefs at opportune crises, by truckling 
to the prejudices and trading on the fears of a pow- 
erful order ; above all, by the aid of an intense self- 
ishness that was able to perceive its ends from afar, 
and to subject principle and even passion to its 
purposes ; the very Mephistopheles and Machiavelli 
of modern politics ; mocking, insincere, indilfferent, 
so far as others were concerned ; persistent, devoted, 
all-grasping in his own designs ; grand in his power 
to compel a race that he despised and an aristocracy 
that despised him, to do his bidding. The other 
was a religious zealot, an intense thinker, and yet a 
practical man ; full of love for the church and satu- 
rated with scholarly veneration for the past ; with 
all -the inborn reverence of an Englishman for what- 
ever is established, and the awe of a middle-class 
man for the aristocracy : yet impelled by the com- 
bined force of his own energies and ambitions, and 



GLADSTONE THE ICONOCLAST. 291 

the tremendous vigor of his ever-expanding intel- 
lectual convictions, as well as by the influence of 
the iconoclastic and reforming spirit of the time — 
that penetrated and finally permeated him — till he 
turned upon the institutions he had loved the best, 
and like one inspired by the Fates, attacked and de- 
stroyed what he had been all his life upholding and 
defending. He was at the head of a brilliant band 
of ardent thinkers and earnest patriots, some of 
them doubtless crude or doctrinaire^ impractical 
and over-zealous; others inclining to the extreme 
of caution, yet representing the element in English 
statesmanship w^hich at that time had accom- 
plished whatever had been achieved by or for the 
English people since the downfall of the Stuarts. 

The first gage of battle was the Irish Church. 
Gladstone was made Prime Minister that he might 
overthrow that relic of the ancient alliance of 
Church and State which he had once written a book 
to defend. The religious enthusiast, the early apos- 
tle of Establishment, led the Whigs and the Radi- 
cals in their assault on the Church, while the political 
adventurer, the renegade from Liberalism, the for- 
eigner in blood and belief, was the champion of the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy, of the aristocracy, and in 
reality, of the court. Their rivalry lasted till the 
death of Beaconsfield. Only one of these men 
could be Prime Minister so long as both were 
living. 



292 ARISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

Gladstone's convictions, his enemies say, have 
always been easily changed when the motive was 
strong ; and it must be admitted that his conver- 
sions have often been seasonable. Any one who 
had studied his career could easily have predicted 
his course in the Irish emergency. He was certain 
to yield when the enemy became irresistible ; to 
lead those to victory whose victory he had himself 
opposed. Circumstances, however, make potent 
arguments. When the political necessity is press- 
ing, the political vision becomes clearer, and emer- 
gency often compels to a course that if the emergency 
did not exist might be unadvisable. It should be 
remembered, too, that Gladstone's progress has al- 
ways been in one direction. After he once set out 
towards Liberalism he has never been a backslider. 
When he could not proceed as far as he wished he 
has neither retreated nor recanted. Whatever the 
inducement, whether of hope or fear, he never re- 
turns to his idols. 

He has been accused of a Jesuitical tendency, of a 
disposition to lind arguments in favor of acts after 
the acts have been performed ; and it is certain that 
when good logic was not at his disposal he has 
sometimes resorted to sophistries unworthy of the 
preacher of purity and Christianity infused into 
politics. Two notable instances of this occurred 
while I was in England. 

One was generally known as the Ewelme scandal. 



GLADSTONE THE ICONOCLAST. 293 

The living of Ewelme is in the gift of the Prime 
Minister, but a provision of law requires the incum- 
bent to be a member of the University of Oxford. 
Mr. Gladstone had a favorite who was a Cambridge 
man, and, that he might receive the coveted prefer- 
ment, this clergyman was first made a member of 
Oxford and then immediately promoted to the po- 
sition reserved for Oxford men. The proceeding 
provoked much harsh criticism, and the Christian 
statesman certainly laid himself open to the charge 
of evading the law for personal purposes. 

The other case affected the judiciary. Only 
judges who have sat in certain courts are eligible 
for appointment to the Judicial Committee of the 
Privy Council, a Court of Appeal of the highest 
dignity and consequence. Its members must be 
selected from the bench, so that their judicial expe- 
rience may tell in their new position. But Mr. 
Gladstone appointed his Attorney-General, Sir 
Robert Collier, to a judgeship for two days, and 
then bestowed on him the preferment intended ex- 
clusively for the bench. These acts speak for them- 
selves. His enemies not unnaturally proclaimed 
that the man who talked so loudly of truth and 
purity had poisoned the fountains of both religion 
and justice, and carried his favoritisnl in spite of 
law into the Church and the Courts. 

These traits may not be omitted from the por- 
trait, but it is pleasant to turn to other features of 



294 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

his character and other incidents in his career. 
The long list of his achievements in behalf of prog- 
ress should not be forgotten in America. During 
his first two administrations Gladstone accom- 
plished more than any other English statesman since 
Cromwell has even attempted in the way of over- 
throwing abuses and reforming institutions. He 
not only disestablished the Irish Church and reno- 
vated the system of Irish tenancy ; he introduced 
the ballot into England, he abolished purchase in 
the army, he extended education, he brought about 
the recent extension of the franchise. He has 
opened the way for the admission of the poorest and 
humblest Englishman to the highest political lights, 
and made inevitable the modification and eventual 
abolition of the firmest-rooted wrongs and the un- 
fairest privileges. Whenever equality, not only of 
position, but of opportunity, is established in Eng- 
gland, Gladstone will be looked upon as the John 
the Baptist, the fore-runner of the Messiah. 

In foreign matters he has championed the op- 
pressed of many lands. More than a quarter of a 
century ago he directed attention to the atrocities ox 
King Bomba of N^aples, and assisted in precipitating 
the downfall of that royal monster ; and in this way 
pioneered the coming of the kingdom of Italy. His 
eloquent utterances after the Bulgarian massacres, 
the tremendous invectives he poured on Turkish 
depravity, are not yet forgotten, and undoubtedly 



GLADSTONE THE ICONOCLAST. 295 

were the chief weapon that struck the cynical friend 
of the Turk, Lord Beaconsiield, from power. 

For in foreign affairs Gladstone has never hesi- 
tated to manifest a spirit almost unexampled in the 
statesmen of any country or time. Hardly ever has 
republican or monarchist dared to set his country 
right, when she was in the wrong, before the world ; 
to confess for her the wrong, to withdraw her from 
a false position, to emulate the gospel spirit, and 
carry Christianity into politics on so grand a scale. 
The retrocession of the Ionian islands, the similar 
policy in South Africa, the determination not to do 
evil in India that good might come; the refusal to 
resist the encroachments of Kussia by perfidious 
or iniquitous means, or to support the Turk in evil 
practices because those practices might tend to the 
benefit of England — these are remarkable instances 
of what I mean. The submission to arbitration of 
the question whether England had done wTong in 
the Alabama matter, was a step of the same char- 
acter ; while the expression of regret for the injury 
inflicted was a humiliation that no statesman ever 
before in history put upon his country willingly. 
Some will call the act sublime; but there were 
many Englishmen who considered it pusillanimous. 
It was not pusillanimous, for it was not extorted by 
fear ; and it tended to produce a cordial sentiment 
between the two countries that nothing else could 
have evoked. 



296 AEISTOCRACT IN ENGLAND. 

Gladstone went through a storm of obloquy and 
condemnation on this account. I was in England 
still, and could watch his course. Public sentiment 
was so violent that at times the representatives of 
the United States felt its influence in their personal 
and social relations, and when the famous " Indirect 
Claims" were presented, the nations stood on the 
verge of war. Americans at home hardly appreci- 
ated the intensity of the British sentiment, but 
those in England, especially if they had access 
to official or important circles, knew the depth of 
the feeling. The press and Parliament were almost 
unanimous in their bitterness and their unfairness. 
But Mr. Gladstone never swerved from his inten- 
tion or his efibrt to carry out what he had prom- 
ised. His loyalty and the skilful diplomacy of 
Secretary Fish and General Schenck, which has 
never been recognized as it deserves, brought the 
two peoples through a crisis of no ordinary char- 
acter. 

The foreign policy of Mr. Gladstone has never 
met the general approbation of his countrymen: 
his genius does not shine in the sphere of diplo- 
macy. Certainly the result in Egypt was not one 
to be proud of. The bombardment of Alexandria 
was a reproach to the English nation, and an out- 
rage on the civilization of the age — punished in the 
same region and the same decade by the disasters 
of the Soudan and the massacre of Gordon. In 



GLADSTONE ^THE ICONOCLAST. 297 

each of his earlier administrations Mr. Gladstone 
so mismanaged his foreign relations that they un- 
doubtedly contributed in each instance to his down- 
fall. He offended unnecessarily the spirit of the 
English nation, humiliated its pride, and seemed, at 
least, to ignore its interests. 

And this cannot be attributed to his lieutenants. 
Though he had at the head of his foreign depart- 
ment a man utterly without force or originality, it 
was not Lord Granville's fault that the tangle was 
so bad. For Gladstone is always master in his own 
cabinet. He controls and directs absolutely. His 
will is law. He dictates the general policy and de- 
cides every detail of importance, and his subordi- 
nates must yield or leave. His party too has 
followed, as well as his cabinet. J^o man has more 
absolutely swayed the nation when he was at its 
head. It was he who determined on Disestablish- 
ment in Ireland, and Arbitration with the United 
States ; on Peace or War with Russia, and Africa, 
and Egypt, and America. It is he who made the 
coalition with Parnell ; it is he who decided that 
Ireland must have a Parliament. Not Bismarck, 
not the first E'apoleon, was more of an autocrat. 

His ablest subalterns are proud to serve under 
him, though they scowl at any other chief. When, 
after the Liberal defeat in 1S74, he retired for a 
while from the leadership of the party, to a man 
they besought him to remain. And when, upon 



298 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

his refusal, Lord Hartington for a while was allowed 
to hold the reins, Gladstone was still a disturbing 
element. Whenever for a night he appeared in 
Parliament, the nominal chief at once went into 
eclipse; and when at last his party returned to 
power, the country would hear of no one but him 
for Prime Minister. The Queen opposed him, but 
made herself and her weakness ridiculous by the 
opposition. 

His personal popularity is prodigious ; but, like 
all great men, he provokes the most violent ani- 
mosities; not only among those who know him in- 
dividually, but in the country at large. He is hated 
by the mass of the aristocracy with a bitterness 
almost unexampled, but very natural, for with a 
true instinct they feel and know that he is their 
greatest foe. Whether he means or wishes it, or no, 
he hurts them more than any million of men be- 
sides. He once said of them : " The Lords are up 
in a balloon ; " elevated above the ordinary world, 
but unable to observe or affect the course of affairs. 
Another time he declared that he should think 
once, he should think twice, he should think three 
times before he would abolish the House of Lords ; 
but if the third occasion passed, he did not say 
what his course would be. And these were the 
utterances of a man who had it in his power to fulfil 
his threats. More than once he has compelled the 
Lords to do his bidding by the menace of adding to 



GLADSTONE THE ICONOCLAST. 299 

their number or lessening their hereditary privi- 
leges. When they obstinately resisted the aboli- 
tion of Purchase in the Army— although the measure 
had passed the House of Commons and was unmis- 
takably approved by the nation — Gladstone revived 
a disused prerogative of the Crown, and forced the 
Queen to declare Purchase abolished by Koyal "War- 
rant — a weapon that had not been resorted to for 
two hundred years. He strained the Constitution, 
but he conquered the Lords. The last great differ- 
ence between him and them was upon the extension 
of the franchise. In this instance the peers yielded 
in time ; but had they held out, he would undoubt- 
edly have shaken the very foundations of their 
position as legislators. 

This single man who threatens and assails one of 
the ancient orders of the State, who places himself 
in antagonism with an entire aristocracy, who forces 
a still powerful class to abandon its privileges and 
trample on its prejudices, is of course the object of 
their profoundest antipathy. But not only the aris- 
tocracy themselves; all the mass of their followers, 
all the prejudiced Tories of the middle and lower 
class, above all those of the press or the literary 
sort— detest the name of Gladstone. To compen- 
sate — about two-thirds of the English nation adore 
him. 'No one in England in my time could evoke 
the enthusiasm that followed him. 

All this is the magic of genius as well as the 



300 ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND. 

might of will; it comes from the combination of 
intellect and character ; the belief in his intention, 
the knowledge of his achievement, the sympathy 
with his effort, the magnetism of his presence and 
personality ; the authority of a born leader of men. 

Of his natural gifts, eloquence is perhaps the 
most easily recognized. His oratory is fiery and 
convincing by turns, but more often fascinating and 
persuading. His lucidity of speech, though he is nei- 
ther terse nor often epigrammatic, is so wonderful 
that he is famous for the charm he flings about the 
most abstruse questions of finance. His long in- 
volved sentences never weary, are never obscure, 
and always lead up to some lofty sentiment that 
either excites the imagination or touches the heart. 

Like most men of genius, he excites a personal 
fascination that is irresistible. His conversation is 
seductive in its interest. You cannot turn away 
from it. He holds you, like the Ancient Mariner, 
till he tells his tale. I was once asked to meet him 
at dinner, when there was no American Minister in 
England. It was at the house of Lord Halifax, one 
of his colleagues in the cabinet, who had corre- 
sponded with me the winter before while I had a 
room at the White House ; and whose letters had 
been avowedly written for me to show to President 
Grant. At the date of the dinner the discussions of 
the Treaty of Washington were at their height, and 
there were grave doubts of the success of the nego- 



GLADSTONE THE ICONOCLAST. 301 

tiation. Lord Halifax asked me to meet Mr. Glad- 
stone, so that I might convey his opinions direct to 
the President. The Prime Minister talked half an 
hour with me alone on the subject of the Treaty, and 
under the circumstances he naturally wished to im- 
press me very fully with his ideas. I saw him, there- 
fore, to unusual advantage, and was never more 
impressed with the power of a man to expound and 
illustrate and enforce his views by conversation. 
Afterward he continued the talk on other themes, 
and discussed the difference between the British 
and the American constitutions, the permanency 
of the systems and institutions of both countries, 
and was as brilliant and as fascinating as his reputa- 
tion had led me to anticipate. I remember his say- 
ing that the American constitution was the most 
perfect ever written by man, which as a good Eng- 
lishman he could admit ; for the British pride them- 
selves on the fact that their constitution is unwritten. 
But he thought Americans had a great advantage in 
elbow-room, as he called it; and that our institutions 
could not be said to have stood their severest test 
till the United States became as crowded as England 
is to-day. 

On another occasion, some years later, he was 
good enough to ask me to breakfast. It was on the 
morning of a day when there was to be a great de- 
bate, which he was to lead ; the result might decide 
the fate of a momentous measure, and either retain 



302 AKISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

liim in power or overthrow him. He had at table 
a party of ten, only two of them ladies, and one of 
these his daughter. Among the other guests were 
a distinguished divine; an ecclesiastical architect, 
or architectural ecclesiastic, I forget which ; the Lib- 
eral son of a duke ; a member of the House of Com- 
mons, and so on. We sat at breakfast an hour and 
a half, but not a word was said about politics, not a 
reference was made to the debate in the evening. 
The principal subject discussed w^as the revision of 
the I^ew Testament, which had just been given to 
the world. The Prime Minister was extremely in- 
terested in this theme. He is learned in his Greek, 
as every one knows, and quoted the original text 
freely. He was entirely opposed to the revision, 
as a substitute for the older version, and ofiered to 
lay five pounds that it would never be authorized 
to be read in the churches. I was amused to hear 
him offer a wager, and on such a theme, and said 
so to his daughter. She told me she had never 
known him make a bet but once before, and that was 
that Disraeli would be a peer before himself 

This versatility of attention displayed at such a 
moment was characteristic of his genius. His in- 
formation is various and his learning catholic as 
well as profound; his power to discuss the most 
different themes astounding. When he was for a 
while out of office, and nominally in retirement, 
the activity of his mind was incessant. He wrote 



GLADSTONE-— THE ICONOCLAST. 303 

pamphlets on the Yatican decrees, published whole 
volumes on Homer and the Youth of the World 
{Juvenilis Mundi) ; and debated artistic, anti- 
quarian, ecclesiastical, and purely literary subjects 
in half the periodicals in England. He was a lay 
reader at morning prayer in the parish church at 
Hawarden, and a hewer of wood in the park imme- 
diately afterward ; and he answered himself every 
post card that any one chose to send him. Finally, 
came his wonderful attack on the Tory foreign 
policy, which tumbled Lord Beaconsfield headlong 
from office and reputation, and indeed terminated 
his career. 

Mr. Gladstone's position in regard to the Ameri- 
can rebellion was one of the mistakes of his life. 
He has had the courage to admit the mistake, and 
the magnanimity to seek to atone for it. He 
thought that the right of secession was implied, 
if not admitted, in the American constitution, and 
like most Englishmen, he failed to see the reasons 
that would have made the admission of that right 
practically impossible, even if it had been logically 
tenable. Even after his famous apology to the 
American people — "Kin Beyond Sea" — I heard 
him declare that he still could not see that Jeffer- 
son Davis was wrong. This is what I should call 
the doctrinaire side of his mind, which disappears 
or is hidden completely in his practical contests in 
English politics. No man can put abstract notions 



304 AEISTOCKACY IN ENGLAND. 

more completely aside than he, or so envelop them 
in a cloud of explanatory comment as to make them 
invisible and innocuous whenever it is desirable for 
his purposes. 

He is indeed a curious development of the Eng- 
lish type; a strange out-growth from the Anglo- 
Saxon root. With his ardent religious faith appar- 
ently never disturbed in this age of scientific and 
intelligent unbelief; with his lofty Christian senti- 
ment, carried, however, more often into foreign 
than domestic politics ; with the extraordinary in- 
directness of his mind in some of its workings, as 
manifested in the Ewelme and Collier affairs — he 
is in many ways as un-English a representative as it 
is possible to imagine. Intellectually I have some- 
times thought him more like an American or a 
Frenchman. His keen penetration, his logical 
acuteness, his abstract philosophy remind one al- 
most of Emerson at times, while in profundity 
and power of generalization, lie is not unlike 
Montesquieu. From one point of view the most 
transcendental and unpractical of statesmen ; yet 
when he descends from the lofty heights where 
he evolves his theories of arbitration and religion 
and doing good to one's enemies — to the arena 
of actual, daily politics, no one is shrewder, more 
politic, more adroit; no one sees the situation 
more clearly, and — far more important and rarer 
quality — no one is readier to adapt himself to the 



GLADSTONE THE ICONOCLAST. 305 

situation that he perceives. No one knows how to 
hit harder or parry better, or understands more 
exactly the strategy of important crises, and the 
tactics of significant details. JSTo one has carried 
great measures through greater difficulties ; against 
the opposition not only of avowed enemies, but of 
loyal friends ; against the influence of the Queen, 
the dislike of high society, the rooted prejudices 
often of the English people, the disapproval occa- 
sionally of the best and soberest minds. 

Yet he marches on in a career of successive 
triumphs. He defeats the heir to one of the oldest 
dukedoms in his family borough ; he forces his col- 
leagues to the support of measures they detest ; he 
compels the acquiescence of the court ; he arouses 
and sometimes justifies, the wildest apprehensions 
of his enemies. He is at this moment the most im- 
portant and imposing figure in English politics ; the 
leader in the army of progress before the world ; the 
champion of the people in a land where they still 
need one ; the ally of a down- trodden sister country, 
to whom he holds out a hand to assist her to rise. 
High-minded and high-purposed; with his faults, 
like all who are human, but battling always against 
wrong or in favor of the weak, he is indeed the 
modern knight- errant, with even a Quixotic dash 
of romance in his temperament ; but able to sup- 
port as well as to attack, to defend as well as to 
destroy. This veteran of nearly seventy-seven, 



306 ARISTOCEACY IN ENGLAND. 

dashing against his enemies with the vigor of youth, 
leading the common people of England whom he 
has raised to a position and power they have never 
known till now ; urging them to make the first use 
of that power to undo the wrongs of centuries in 
Ireland; offering to the men who have just dealt 
him the severest blow the justice that they claim — 
this man may not extort from the aristocrats of 
Europe the approbation he deserves, but Americans 
and democrats, believers in the people and friends 
of the people everywhere, cannot but recognize in 
him at once the noblest and greatest statesman of 
his time. 



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